Time to Take Her Home
by lafiametta
Summary: In 1995, Jax Teller and Tara Knowles somehow found each other. These were the days of grunge and truancy. These were the days of falling in love for the first time. Rated T for language.
1. Big Empty

May 1995

_Driving faster in my car  
__Falling farther from just what we are  
__Smoke a cigarette and lie some more  
__These conversations kill  
__Falling faster in my car…_

"Fucking high school parties." Opie couldn't hold back his irritation as he stepped around a brunette half-passed out on the lawn. "Tell me why we're here again, Jax?"

Jax wished he could answer his friend, but, honestly, he didn't even know. He'd only heard about this party, one last bang-out before graduation, from an old stoner friend of his, a guy so out of it he had thought _Jax_ would be a good person to cheat off of in Spanish. Not that Jax would be graduating. Not that he had even passed Spanish.

It wasn't as if these were his friends, either. Aside from the occasional run-in at the Quik Mart or the fast food joints off of Highway 12, he hadn't seen any of them since December. That was the last time he had seen the inside of a classroom. He could almost laugh. While they were sitting in nice little rows answering dumb-ass questions about _The Scarlet Letter_, Jax was arm-deep in engine rebuilds, or out on the road, running messages for the club, sun sweet on his face and bike purring between his legs. SAMCRO was his school now, and even though he wasn't a fully patched member yet, he would be, like his father and step-father. There wasn't any point pretending he was meant for anything else. It was a mother-fucking _destiny_.

But, still, here he was. Around a bunch of people he didn't really know, three-quarters of whom he could tell he scared shitless. He had decided to leave his cut at home – thank God Clay had asked the guys to take it easy on him by not making him wear the Prospect patch – but he and Ope had ridden out on their bikes, engine growl temporarily overpowering the sound of the blasting stereo coming out of the house. They had gotten a few once-overs as they made their way across the front lawn, a few guys' gazes frozen in place as they tried not to make eye contact, a bunch of wannabe-punk girls sipping from red Solo cups appraising them hungrily. _Maybe_, Jax thought momentarily, _if it comes to that_.

He roughly clapped a hand on Opie's flannel-clad shoulder. "The beer's free. And the girls…" He left the rest unsaid, pausing only to grin.

Inside, the music was even louder, pumping out a Stone Temple Pilots song that had been playing non-stop on the radio for nearly a year. The lights were dim and the whole place reeked of cigarettes and weed.

"I'll go get us some beers," Opie said, nodding towards the kitchen, where Jax could glimpse a keg surrounded by a bunch of buzz-cut guys in letter jackets.

Moving into the living room, Jax gave it a quick once-over, seeing nothing worth too much notice: a few potted plants, glass-topped coffee table, ceramic figurines lining the fireplace mantle. Some kids were on the carpet near the windows, passing around a joint. A couple sat on the end of the plaid-patterned couch, oblivious to the world, faces plastered together, hands _everywhere_. On the other end was a dark-haired girl, hands clasped around a cup of beer that she was sipping from. Her eyes stared out emptily into the space in front of her, indicating to Jax that she either had way too much on her mind or way too much to drink, probably both. As she moved the cup away from her face, he realized that he knew her, from where he couldn't exactly say, some vague impression left from the endless days of over-packed, locker-filled halls. For an instant, she glanced over at him, dark brown eyes flashing, only to turn her unsteady gaze back towards the invisible object of her attention.

In that flash, Jax latched on to a memory of a quiet girl two rows across from him in sophomore English – a class he had been taking for the second time – who, without warning one rainy Thursday afternoon, raised her hand and asked why Raskolniknov wasn't, in fact, the hero of the story, not the villain. The teacher had sputtered – _"How can a killer, an outlaw, possibly be a hero, Miss Knowles?"_ – and dismissed the question entirely, but it had woken Jax out of his literal and figurative sleep, if only for a few minutes. She had never raised her hand again, though. _What the fuck is she doing here?_ he thought.

_Time to take her home  
__Her dizzy head is conscience laden  
__Time to take a ride  
__It leaves today  
__No conversation  
__Time to take her home  
__Her dizzy head is conscience laden  
__Time to wait too long, to wait too long, to wait too long…_

_What the fuck am I doing here?_ Tara asked herself, already regretting so much about the evening, starting with her original decision to come to this party with her so-called friend Michelle, who had promptly ditched her to run out back to the pool with her crush _du jour_, and ending with her most recent decision to drink three – make that three and a half – cups of shitty-ass beer.

The original decision could be laid at the feet of her father, who had showed up at home that night already drunk, and who seemed prepared to lay into a fresh bottle of Johnnie Walker as soon as he could manage to get the wrapper off._"Goddamn it, Tara, come and help me!" _He never stopped yelling, especially when he had too much. In a way, even though she missed her like crazy, Tara was glad her mother hadn't lived to see this, hadn't had to watch this pitiful excuse for a family. Personally, she couldn't wait to get the hell out of this town the first chance she got. For tonight, though, she would settle for being out of that house.

The decision – although it wasn't much of a decision, but more of a resignation – to drink the shitty-ass beer couldn't really be explained quite so well. _But what else does one do at a shitty-ass party, when one has been ditched by one's shitty-ass friend?_ After twenty minutes of wandering around with a cup in her hand – a cup many guys were more than willing to refill – Tara had made her way to the living room, half-heartedly watching the potheads on the floor get mesmerized by the window drapes and actively trying to ignore the couple next to her on the couch busy searching for each other's tonsils.

She thought about going home, although she had no ride, and Michelle would no doubt be occupied for a while. Just then, she saw a shadow move near the door to the hallway and glanced up for a moment.

_Jax Teller was staring at her. What the ever-loving fuck?_

She knew Jax Teller. Everyone knew Jax Teller. If you were smart, you kept your distance, and if you were even smarter, you pretended he did not exist. His family was part of some biker club who everybody knew was carrying all the time – God, he probably had a gun on him right now – and who seemed to have a handle on things in this town in a way she didn't even want to understand. He had slept through most of the English class they had been in together, never handing in a paper, never cracking open a book, and had disappeared after the end of the fall semester. She knew he was working in his step-father's garage, wearing his biker leather around town like it was an invitation to try to mess with him, and now he was standing not fifteen feet away, hopefully no longer looking at her.

"Here you go, man. Bottom of the keg, though." This voice was lower – not _his_, she somehow knew – and then, thankfully, she heard the metallic jingle of wallet chains and the two shadows in her peripheral vision were gone.

She let out a breath she didn't realize she had been holding. And promptly downed the remainder of her beer.

Fifteen minutes later, she decided she had had enough of waiting for Michelle, of this party, of this goddamn night in general. She stood up, only to realize her head was circling somewhere around her knees, and promptly sat back down again on the couch. Everything was swimming – up, down, right, left – and she blinked several times to refocus. _Goddamn it. She couldn't even stand up. Her father's fucking daughter, after all._

She took a grip on the couch arm, using it to push herself up. Trying to keep her head level – and not clue in anyone else as to how ripped she had gotten – she moved slowly towards the hallway, hoping to make it to the banister and take a minute there before she tried to go anywhere else.

Halfway across the hallway, nearly within reach of the railing, Tara suddenly felt something slam into her from the side, causing her to spill across the floor, hands splayed to catch her fall.

"Oh, shit, baby, I didn't see you there," a male voice echoed through the hallway. She felt arms come around her waist and shoulders as she was hauled back up on her feet, landing in the arms of a total stranger. Attempting to refocus her vision again, she first saw the faded logo of his Pink Floyd t-shirt, then looked up into his face; he seemed amused, perhaps at the situation they were in, but then as he glanced up and down the length of her, a harder, more _directed_look began to appear in his eyes.

"Hey, are you okay?" he asked, his eyes staring a little more closely into hers.

_Was he looking to see how messed up she was? Oh, God, she had to get out of here. Where the fuck was Michelle?_

"I'm fine." Tara tried to push away from him a little bit, but his hold was firm on her upper arms. He pushed a lock of hair off her forehead and tucked it behind her ear. _Shit, did he think that was sexy? _Despite the danger to her equilibrium, she turned her head away from his touch.

"I don't know… You look a little out of it." He snaked an arm across her shoulders, holding her in tighter.

"I'm fine," she repeated, as if saying it again would have a different effect. She knew the words weren't coming out as strongly as she wanted. She tried to pull back a little more forcefully. There were people coming in and out of the hallway. Why weren't they doing anything? "I just need to find my friend…"

He began to pivot her towards the stairs. "No, I think you may need to lie down. Let's go find someplace for you to…" _Oh, God, no, she could not let him finish that sentence. She could not let him…_

She felt the jarring clamp of a hand coming down on his shoulders, as it reverberated through her own.

"She said she was fine."

She looked behind her. _Holy fuck, it was Jax Teller. And everyone was staring._

_Too much walking shoes worn thin  
__Too much trippin' and my soul's worn thin  
__Time to catch a ride  
__It leaves today  
__Her name is what it means  
__Too much walking shoes worn thin..._

He almost didn't see it. Opie had gone off to see some of his old friends from the JV baseball team, and _like fuck_ Jax was going to stand around and talk about _team sports_, so he had gone back to the house to get another beer. The girl from the couch – the girl from his English class, he corrected himself – was standing in the hallway with some guy, looking pretty friendly as his arms were draped all over her. _Good for her, man_, he thought, until she turned and he saw the look in her eyes.

When he was eleven, his father had taken him camping up at Los Vaqueros. They were just messing around, seeing if they could find some squirrels for Jax to practice shooting at with his BB gun, when they came across a coyote with its leg caught in a rusted bear trap. It was the look of confusion, panic, and terror on that coyote – up until the point that his dad had shot it in the head – that he never could quite forget. She looked exactly the same.

He could hear her quiet protests that she was fine. He could hear the guy's reply about needing to lie down. And, unfortunately, Jax knew exactly what lying down would mean for her. If she had this little fight in her now, she'd have none by the time he got her upstairs.

And without really knowing what he was doing, he paced over to them, palming the guy's shoulder with enough force that he got the message.

"She said she was fine," he said slowly.

Sometimes he had to thank God for the reputation he had. Because when the guy looked back to see who had touched him, the face of easy confidence slipped, replaced by the realization that he was now in deep shit.

He released the girl, pulling his hands up in a protest of innocence. "Hey, man…"

The girl, now without a source of support, listed towards the wall, barely catching herself with her hands. A crowd of onlookers had apparently gathered in the doorways, waiting to see what would happen next. The guy still stood there, playing like he was the injured party, and with every passing second, Jax wanted more and more to punch him in the face.

"Get the fuck out of here," Jax quietly growled. And, luckily, the guy didn't need much more convincing than that and took off down the hallway. Jax looked around the room, daring anyone else to keep standing there staring at him.

The girl was still leaning precariously against the wall, seemingly holding herself up by will alone.

"C'mere," he said, as he lightly grasped her shoulders and helped her sit down on the stairs.

_Time to take her home  
__Her dizzy head is conscience laden  
__Time to take a ride  
__It leaves today  
__No conversation..._

No one would believe her. That was the thing. Even _she_ wouldn't have believed her. If someone had said to her that morning, _Tara, by the end of today, you will get shit-faced at some random party, and Jax Teller will not only prevent you from being physically assaulted, he will then play nice with you and sit with you on the stairs while you sober up_, she would have told them they were fucking insane.

But this was what was happening.

She didn't know what to say to him. Honestly, what _could_ she say to him? But she had to say something. She couldn't just sit there, so close to him, knowing she had almost been the reason for a fight, not understanding for the life of her _why_, thinking about how he probably beat the shit out of guys all the time, probably for no reason at all, smelling him, and _damn_, he smelled really good.

"Thanks."

"Yeah," he replied, with a little nod.

He was leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, distractedly picking under his fingernails, the napped flannel of his shirt stained near the cuffs with what looked like motor oil.

She kept looking at him, catching little glimpses, until she realized she was full-on staring. _What was she thinking? Jax Teller isn't someone you just look at. _He chose just that moment to glance back at her, his blue eyes catching hers in a way that made her breath pull up against her chest. _And, oh, God, definitely no one would believe her now. _He was really and truly looking right fucking at her. And she couldn't help herself; she stared at his mouth, at the blond lengths of his hair, at his neck where it met the jaw, sprouting a tiny, half-day's growth of beard.

She should have been running scared. She should have been fucking terrified of him.

But she wasn't. Sitting here, with him, she suddenly realized how tired she was. Tired of playing house with a drunk dad, trying to pretend that everything was fine. Tired of staying quiet and unobtrusive, like a fucking scared little rabbit, hoping no one would notice her. But this boy next to her, he was danger and freedom, he was a gigantic middle finger to the world, and _goddamn it_, he was so beautiful.

The words came out of her mouth before she even knew she had thought them. "Have you ever just wanted..." she started.

"What?"

"To be somewhere else?"

He smiled a little, warmth seeping into his eyes. "Yeah."

She smiled back at him, still not understanding what was happening between them. _Goddamn, she must still be pretty trashed. That was the only way to explain the words that were coming out of her mouth._

"You've got a motorcycle, right?"

_Time to take her home  
__Her dizzy head is conscience laden  
__Time to wait too long, to wait too long, to wait too long  
__Conversations kill  
__Conversations kill  
__Conversations kill_

She held onto his shoulder as they walked across the lawn, partially for balance, but he could tell she was in better shape than she had been when he first saw her. He caught Opie's glance in the distance – his friend was circled round with a few other guys, smoking and knocking back beers – and in return earned a clear nod of acknowledgement regarding the girl by his side and the direction in which they were headed.

He still didn't quite understand what she wanted. Hell, he didn't even understand what _he_ wanted. She had asked to see his bike, and that normally meant something pretty clear to him, but he sensed _that_ wasn't really what she was after. She still hadn't completely sobered up, so he knew he should have tried to help her find her friend, who would get her home safe, but he wasn't ready to say goodnight to her just yet. There was something there, in her small movements, in the dark pools of her eyes, in her ability just to sit with him in the quiet.

Once they got to his bike, she circled around it, taking in the metal and chrome, the silver SAMCRO decal of the grim reaper. To his surprise, she sat back against the seat, looking at him again like she had on the stairs, seeing something he wasn't sure he even recognized.

"Will you… will you just take me…" Her voice trailed off.

"Take you where?"

Her eyes were full of desperation and alcohol. "I don't care. Anywhere."

Somehow, he knew exactly what she was asking for.

"I can do anywhere."

He handed her his helmet, and watched her struggle awkwardly to get the clasp shut. Grasping her hands – _small, thin, warm_ – he attached the clasp with a little click, but didn't immediately move away. He could feel the smoothness of her neck against the back of his fingers, the tiny motions of breath and blood. He turned to straddle the bike, inviting her to get up behind him. As she threw her leg over the seat, her hands squeezed tight around his rib cage, constricting his breathing in a way that he found surprisingly enjoyable.

"What's your name, darlin'?" he asked, as the engine roared to life.

"Tara," she half-yelled into his ear.

"Tara," he repeated, turning the word over in his mind. "Nice to meet you. I'm Jax Teller."


	2. Tonight, Tonight

_Time is never time at all  
__You can never ever leave  
__Without leaving a piece of youth  
__And our lives are forever changed  
__We will never be the same  
__The more you change the less you feel…_

The night was alive on her skin, the wind whispering against her face, whipping through her hair. She hadn't realized what it would be like, the speed and pull, the immediacy of the road rushing under her, his warm solidity a steady anchor. The stars gleamed tiny and bright against the dark velvet sky.

Tara didn't know where they were exactly, only some vague notion of heading west. The headlights of oncoming cars were becoming less and less frequent as they threaded their way through county roads, long cresting rows of alfalfa half-visible in the moonlight.

Everything still seemed somehow unreal to her. It was as if she was dreaming, and wasn't quite sure whether or not she wanted to wake up. She still could not understand what had possessed her to get on the back of his bike, and if she was being totally honest, she couldn't really figure out why he had agreed to take her anywhere in the first place. Despite his dangerous reputation, Jax Teller could no doubt leave a party with any girl he wanted. _Hell, _she thought, _that was probably part of the appeal._

An icy pit formed in her stomach. _What if he was taking her out here so he could finish what that guy at the party started? Out here, no one would hear her. _Somehow, though, through the haze of her momentary panic, she sensed that wasn't what he had in mind. She recalled his earlier look of protective fury, the way the fingers of his right hand had unconsciously drawn together into a loose fist. When he had helped her to sit, his hands had gently cupped her shoulders, his grip warm through her thin cotton t-shirt.

_So, why, then? How was all this really happening?_

"You okay back there?" he shouted, as he quickly glanced at her.

"Yeah." Tara could barely yell, her throat was so dry from the night air.

"We're almost there," he said, and then gunned the engine, mechanical vibrations coursing against her. She leaned into him, taking cover from the rush of wind.

_Almost where?_

_Believe, believe in me, believe, believe  
__That life can change, that you're not stuck in vain  
__We're not the same, we're different  
__Tonight, tonight, tonight  
__So bright  
__Tonight, tonight…_

Jax could feel her tucking closer against him, the contact adding to the already acute sensation of her forearms locked around his ribs, the sides of her knees against his hips. He tried to push it aside and focus on the road, the headlight beam blanketing out over rough gravel. He watched for the mile marker, not wanting to miss the turn-off. Not that he was looking for a road, exactly. That was the nice thing about motorcycles; you didn't always need to stay on the beaten path.

Theoretically, he could have taken her anywhere. His house. Some late-night strip mall fast food place. The club. _Oh, fuck. That would have been weird._ He could barely even imagine it. Five minutes in the SAMCRO clubhouse on a Friday night would have put the fear of God into those dark eyes. He glanced back at her again. Man, she was just a kid; she couldn't be more than sixteen. Not that he was _that_ much older – he had just turned seventeen last month – but those years had provided Jax with an unvarnished experience of the world that he knew was not necessarily normal. After all, not everyone's family started fights at Little League games that had to be broken up by the cops.

He slowed the bike down and turned off towards the right, following a dirt path that bisected an open field. Up fifty yards or so, he stopped and cut the engine. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could feel her shift behind him, unhooking her arms and stepping off the bike, an empty chill stealing into the space that she had occupied. It was pretty dark out, but, luckily, the moon was full and high, and he could see her outlined as he turned towards her and took back the helmet that she offered in her hand.

Before she could pull her hand back – before he had a moment to think about what he was doing – Jax enfolded it in his own and tugged her down the path, stopping as he reached a long and narrow channel cut into the ground, reinforced on both sides with concrete walls. A shallow stream of water ran along the bottom of the canal, still and silver in the moonlight. He pulled her down with him so they sat on the edge of the concrete bank, their legs dangling down the side. He cursed himself for not having the balls to look at her or say something to chase away the silence.

She cleared her throat and pulled her hand away – _shit, had he read her wrong?_ – so that she could rub the side of her nose.

"So, uh, this is it." _Fuck, was that the best he could do?_

"Right," she replied. "So… what is it?" He looked over at her; her eyes were clearer now, free of the sheen of intoxication he had seen at the party. The moonlight had turned her skin pale, like ivory.

"Yeah, it's just an irrigation canal. But it goes all the way to the bay."

"Okay… But why here?"

"You sure ask a lot of questions." He smiled a little at her, just so she'd know he was teasing, but she was staring out in front of her, not meeting his gaze.

"Yeah… Sorry."

"No, I mean, it's okay… I just found this place a couple months ago. I've never seen anyone out here. It's quiet, you know? You can just kinda sit and no one bothers you." He glanced around. "It's different in the daytime, though. Less… dark." He smiled at her again; this time she was looking at him.

"Normally… in the daytime… people are supposed to be at school," she replied, with the slight raised edge of sarcasm.

"Most people."

"But not you."

He slowly shook his head. Neither of them had looked away. Jax could feel his breathing start to deepen, his hands tightening with warmth and the urge to move, and, after a very long moment, his gaze dropped down towards her mouth. She bit her lips together and then glanced down.

"Why not?"

He was still momentarily distracted by her mouth. "Why not what?"

"Why aren't you at school?"

He had to refocus for a minute. First, he needed to stop looking at her, and second, he had to find a coherent set of words that wouldn't make him sound like a fucking juvenile delinquent.

"Uh, well, school and I don't really get along well together," he offered. She didn't say anything; he thought for a moment he had said something wrong, until he realized that she was waiting for him to keep talking, to give her more than just an easy explanation.

It was at that moment Jax understood that he didn't really know how to talk to a girl. That is, he had _talked_ to girls, but normally the talking didn't last that long before they moved on to other, more preferable activities. But he sure as hell didn't have _conversations_ with them. Not that it really would have helped him, anyway: he got the sense that this one was a different breed altogether. _Fuck him_, as he realized he wanted nothing more than to figure her out.

_And you know you're never sure  
__But you're sure you could be right  
__If you held yourself up to the light  
__And the embers never fade  
__In your city by the lake  
__The place where you were born…_

It was totally fucking crazy, when you really thought about it. She was sitting here, out in the middle of nowhere, next to Jax Teller, and they were having a _conversation_. He had brought her out here on the back of his bike, _he had grabbed her hand_, he was looking at her as if he actually cared what she was talking about. _Oh, God, he had held her hand, hadn't he? She hadn't imagined that part?_ But it had been too much, that feeling of his hand circling around hers, the weight of it more than she had known what to do with at the moment. _What a fucking coward she was._

But… _could he possibly like her?_ The entire idea was so monumentally absurd that she could almost laugh. Girls like her were not even in the orbit of guys like Jax Teller. Of course, in a town this small, they were bound to run across each other – and it wasn't as if she hadn't succumbed to the occasional daydream where he interrupted Mrs. Levitt's droning prattle about _The Canterbury Tales _and dragged Tara out to the parking lot so they could make out in front of the entire school – but up until an hour ago, _he hadn't known_ _her fucking name_. So what the hell was going on?

She looked over at him again. A lock of dirty blond hair was sitting on the coil of his ear; she wanted so badly to tuck it back in place, to feel the silk of it on the tips of her fingers. She glanced down at what he was wearing: baggy jeans, Docs, a white and black checked flannel. _Seventy degrees out, and he's wearing flannel like he's in fucking Seattle_. She smiled. _Dumbass_.

"I just didn't see any point in going anymore." He was still talking about why he had left school. "I'm not really what you'd call the academic type. And I was already working at the garage, so…" He shrugged his shoulders. A small glint appeared in his eyes, one she was beginning to recognize as his mischievous look. "But what about you?"

She didn't get it. "What do you mean, 'what about me'?"

"Why are you _at_ school?"

She gave him a half-smile. "Well, I'm _not_ working at the garage, so…" She paused. "And I want to go to college," she added with a somewhat unintended level of seriousness.

"Yeah?" He sounded genuinely excited for her.

"I was thinking I might want to be a doctor."

"No shit?" He grinned and it lit up his face, making him look younger, sweeter. "_Dr. Tara_… And I'll be able to say I knew you back in the day." _God, her heart was beating so fast._

"So, do you have any brothers or sisters?" he asked. Shit, the family conversation. Like hell she was going to talk about her dad. No one needed to know anything about that.

"Nope. Only child."

"Just you and your parents, then?"

She shook her head. "Just me and my dad."

"Your parents got divorced?" Tara pressed her lips together. She knew where this line of questioning would end up. _Better just to go there, than beat around it_.

"No, my mom died. When I was nine."

He got quieter; she watched the muscles around his jaw tighten. "Yeah… my dad…" She knew he wasn't going to finish that sentence. Eventually he would, but not tonight.

"Yeah…" She nodded a little. It wasn't as if he had to tell her, anyway. All of Charming knew how J. T. Teller had crashed into a semi-trailer out on 580 eighteen months ago. How it had taken him two days to die. There wasn't anything she could say to him that would do anything at all. And _she_ would know.

She knocked him with her shoulder. "Look at us. Founding members of the Dead Parent Club." The moment it came out, she regretted it. She hadn't meant to sound so callous. His eyes shifted from shocked to furious, in rapid succession. But then, strangely enough, he took a breath and started to laugh. When she glanced over at him again, Tara could swear he almost looked _impressed_.

"You've got a fucking sick sense of humor, you know that?"

She gave him a sly smile. "So I've been told."

But it wasn't true. He was the first person to ever tell her that.

_Believe, believe in me, believe, believe  
__In the resolute urgency of now  
__And if you believe there's not a chance  
__Tonight, tonight, tonight  
__So bright  
__Tonight, tonight…_

Jax could tell that she was fading. They had been talking for at least an hour or two – without a watch, he could only go by the movement of the moon towards the horizon – and he could see her start to blink her eyes rapidly, stifle a yawn here and there. He knew she had had a long night, what with the party, and the drinking, and taking off with him in the middle of it all. He knew he should be responsible and take her back home, let her sleep in her own bed.

"Hey, Tara…" He caught the side of her face with his hand, and gently pushed a strand of hair away from her forehead with his thumb. She closed her eyes and leaned slightly into him. Damn, she _was_ tired. She might not even be able to make the drive back.

"C'mere…" He pulled her towards him as he laid down on the ground. At first she seemed confused, but then she realized that he was offering his stomach as a makeshift pillow, and if she stretched out her legs, she could get half-way comfortable. And like this, he could easily brush the fingers of his right hand against her hair, an action that he found unexpectedly calming. She turned a little on her side, looking up towards him. Her dark eyes were half-closed already.

"Hey…" she said sleepily.

"Hey," he replied, letting a moment pass in the quiet. He remembered going on camping trips with his dad, how they had laid out side-by-side under the night sky. "Do you wanna know something?"

"What?"

"So... the stars you're looking at, they're so far away, billions of light years away, that by the time we can see them, they're already gone. What we're looking at are just ghosts."

"Wow." He could see the glint of a smile as she closed her eyes. "Who knew you were more than just a pretty face, Teller?"

He couldn't help it: he cracked up. But another part of it was that he liked her talking to him like this, as if he didn't scare her, as if he was somebody normal. And even with her eyes closed, she was smiling, too, biting her lips together to keep from laughing.

_We'll crucify the insincere tonight, tonight  
__We'll make things right, we'll feel it all tonight, tonight  
__We'll find a way to offer up the night, tonight  
__The indescribable moments of your life, tonight  
__The impossible is possible, tonight  
__Believe in me as I believe in you  
__Tonight_

It was so unfair. He was just _there_, so close next to her, and all her body wanted to do was sleep. Eventually, she knew it would win the battle. But for now she could think about him. And her. Was there even a _them_? Whatever this was, for tonight at least she would give up trying to understand it.

In one's life, there are moments when you realize things are about to change. When your mom sits down next to you on your bed, the afternoon after getting back from the doctor's, her words soft, but not really making full sense in your nine-year-old brain. When you realize, at age thirteen, that your father has been hiding empty bottles of bourbon in the garbage cans out behind the house, that all his promises about A.A. are for shit. When you lie next to a boy, feeling the rise and fall of his breath against your cheek, knowing that if you open your eyes and look at him, your heart will explode into a million pieces, and being not so sure that you're ready for it.

_Maybe tomorrow she would be sure_, Tara thought, as she was finally pulled into the darkness.


	3. Daughter

_Alone, listless, breakfast table in an otherwise empty room  
__Young girl, violence, center of her own attention  
__Mother reads aloud, child tries to understand it  
__Tries to make her proud  
__The shades go down, it's in her head  
__Painted room, can't deny there's something wrong…_

_Please, God, please please please, let him be asleep. Let him be passed out. Let him be face down in those couch cushions, snoring so loud he never hears her walking by. _

Tara cracked the front door open, willing it not to make a sound. Inside, it was still and quiet, the glaring morning sun creating square patterns of light on the living room carpet. She looked over at the couch. _Empty. Shit. _But maybe he had miraculously made it to his own bed. Closing the door softly behind her, she made deliberate steps towards the back of the house, hoping to make it to her room before he ever realized she hadn't been home.

"Where have you been?"

He was sitting at the kitchen table, wearing rumpled clothes from the night before, a half-smoked cigarette dangling from his fingers into the ashtray.

_Fuck. _

"Out." Like hell she was going to tell him anything.

He stubbed the cigarette out roughly. "Damn it, Tara… There are rules here."

Outrage flamed through her. She stood defensively, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Rules? Yeah, sure, since when?"

She hadn't meant to sound so angry. Her original plan, had she been caught, was to offer some half-assed apology and make a quick exit. But this in-my-house-there-are-rules bullshit he was playing pissed her off to no end. Not after she had spent more nights than she could count cleaning up his messes.

"I'm still your father. And I don't want you staying out all night, staying out with boys…"

"Boys?" she sputtered. "What boys?"

"Some friend of yours called this morning, looking for you. Damn early, too. She woke me up. Said you had left some party with a boy..."

_Goddamn it, Michelle._

"He's just a friend." Shit, was this even true? Were they friends? "We were just talking."

"Until seven in the morning? Must be really good friends."

The way he said it, sneering out the words, made her almost want to cry. What had happened last night between her and Jax – whatever the fuck it had been – it belonged just to her, to keep in her heart like a secret. She wasn't going to listen to him dirty it.

"Yeah, whatever," she muttered, as she turned in the direction of her room.

"Don't walk away from me. We're not done here." He looked around, as if searching for something final to say, a chance to take control of the conversation. "You can't just pull crap like this without consequences. You're grounded… For the next month."

"Are you kidding me?"

"And when you go out, I want to know with who."

"Doesn't matter, does it?" she scoffed. "According to you, I won't be going anywhere." _The room was too bright, too overwhelming; she had to get out of there._ She turned and stalked away down the hall, her stride lengthening with resentment. Once within the safe enclosure of her room, she slammed the door in a belated effort of protest.

_Fucking goddamn morning._

She collapsed against her bed and turned her face into the softness of the bedspread, trying to block out light, sound, all the intrusions of her senses. What the hell was that all about? What made him think he could just wake up one morning and decide to be in charge of her? One by one, she kicked off her shoes and then drew her knees upwards towards her chest, curling herself into a soft little ball. With a free arm, she grabbed the edge of the blanket and pulled it over herself; her breathing began to slow, the clench in her shoulders loosening.

It was almost funny, if you thought about it. A month of staying at home all night? It would be just like any other fucking month. All she ever did was go to school, come home, study, and mentally count down the next two years. Once a week, she took the Cutlass out to the grocery store, trying not to be embarrassed by the horrible engine noises it made as it idled in traffic. The party last night had been the first time she had really gone out since, fuck, she couldn't even remember.

And then, this morning – _shit, this morning_ – she had woken up, at first completely disoriented, not remembering why the hell she was _outside_, and then turned over to see him rubbing his palms against his face. In the early sunlight, the fields beyond the canal opened emptily towards the horizon. If only she had known what to do, how to play it cool. Instead, she had inwardly freaked, turning quiet and self-conscious, half-hiding behind the curtain of her hair. Whatever easy self-possession she had presented the night before had fully deserted her. It was a relief when he had finally offered to take her home.

Beneath her blanket, Tara squeezed her eyes tight.

Mornings were harsh and unforgiving. They threw light onto things you didn't necessarily want to see.

_Don't call me daughter, not fit to  
__The picture kept will remind me  
__Don't call me daughter, not fit to  
__The picture kept will remind me  
__Don't call me…_

Teller-Morrow was shut tight as a drum – they didn't open on Saturdays until ten – but Jax could hear the stereo blasting in the garage as he slid the padlock back onto the sliding security gate and then pushed his bike into the empty lot.

"_...Slow ride…Take it easy…"_

Opie's bike was parked up against the garage. Turning the corner, Jax caught a glimpse of his friend's legs stuck out from underneath some Toyota piece of shit. He was singing along, but, luckily for everyone within hearing distance – which appeared to be just Jax – the sound was muffled by the car.

"…_Come on baby…Take a slow ride with me…"_

Jax walked over to the bay and kicked one of the tires.

"Ope. Hey, man…" He heard the rolling squeak of the creeper against concrete. "You want some breakfast tacos?"

"Hey, Jax…" replied Opie, as he got to his feet and turned to shut off the radio. "You got me tacos? How'd you know I'd be here?"

"I didn't... I just ordered a lot."

He threw Opie the greased bag as they walked over to the picnic table back by the clubhouse entrance. For a while, they just ate together in companionable silence. A real perk of having a best friend since childhood was that you didn't have to talk all the time, you could just sit, and somehow know exactly what was happening without saying much at all.

"So your mom called earlier. I told her you stayed over at my house."

"Shit... And she believed you?"

Opie shrugged his shoulders. _Fuck. Jax did not want to deal with his mother right now._

Another moment passed in quiet as Opie inhaled the last bites of his chorizo. One of the things that Jax loved about Ope was that he was least nosy motherfucker in the world; he knew Ope would never ask where he had been, who the girl was, what they had ended up doing. Part of it, Jax knew, was because Ope never got as much play as he did, and so probably didn't _want_ to know the details, but it was still nice to have a clean line of separation: Ope on one side, girls firmly on the other.

Except this time.

"So, uh…" _Shit, this was awkward_. "Do you know a girl named Tara?"

"From school?"

"Yeah."

"Well, Tara Branson moved with her mom back to Modesto. So, must be Tara Knowles. Brown hair, right?"

"Yeah." Jax let out a little breath. "So… what's her deal?"

Opie's dark eyebrows knit together in confusion.

"Uh, she's smart…" Opie drew out the last word, as if unsure that this was the kind of information his friend was looking for. "Studies a lot. Not that many friends. But she's kinda cute, in a skinny rocker chick way…"

"Yeah, okay." Jax ran his hand through his hair. He needed this particular conversation to be over, _now_. "So you working today?"

"Clay put me on from open to close. You?"

Jax nodded. Work would be good. Work would help him focus. Then he could deal with his mother, and whatever shit-storm she felt like bringing into his life today.

_She holds the hand that holds her down  
__She will rise above  
__Don't call me daughter, not fit to  
__The picture kept will remind me  
__Don't call me daughter, not fit to  
__The picture kept will remind me…_

She had just gotten out of the shower, her hair damp and flat against her back, and was fishing her chemistry book out of her backpack when the phone rang. The sound was loud, insistent.

"Hello?"

"Tara?"

_Michelle_. It took everything Tara had to not hang up the phone right then and there.

"Yeah…"

"Tara, what the hell happened last night? I heard from Jenny Romansky that Jax Teller and some guy got in a fight over you and then you took off with him?"

Tara sighed. "Nothing happened. There wasn't a fight."

"But you took off with him?"

"Who?"

"_Jax_."

"Yeah."

"_Yeah_," Michelle repeated mockingly. "What the fuck were you thinking? Did you sleep with him?"

"What? No." She took a breath. "Nothing happened. We just talked. We fell asleep."

"Don't even fucking try that with me. Nobody goes off with Jax to just talk and sleep."

_Goddamn it, she was not going to have this conversation for the second time today._ "I have to go, Michelle. I'll see you Monday."

"No, wait…" Tara heard as she hung up the phone.

_God, what a fucking mess_, she thought as she dropped down to sit on the edge of her bed. And thanks to the shit-show that was her small town high school, no doubt everyone had heard by now that she had given it up to Jax Teller. She knew it wouldn't even do her any good to deny it; no one would believe her. It was just the way things worked. From here on out, she would become one of _those_ girls, the kind that everyone looked at a little different – hell, even Tara herself looked at them different – the ones the boys knew were easy marks, who had given in once and could, in theory, be convinced to give in again. Even Tara, as low as she was on the social scale, knew there were worse places to be. And that's exactly where she was about to land. _God, this small-minded, backward, fucking-ass town._

The shittiest part was that all this would do absolutely nothing to him. No one cared if Jax Teller slept with a dozen girls – if anything, it only solidified his reputation – and he could walk away from this with nothing more than a couple hearty slaps on the back. He probably thought the whole thing was funny.

And it _was_ funny. Sickly, rip-your-heart-open funny. Because, the truth was, he hadn't seemed like he was really trying to get with her last night. He probably didn't even like her at all. This morning, after he had let her off his bike – she had insisted they stop half a block from her house because she didn't want her dad waking up with the noise – he had given her a given her a nod, a cursory "_See ya_," and then promptly took off. She was left standing on the sidewalk, adrift, looking down and realizing she would be walking home still wearing the clothes from the night before.

Damn it, what _had_ she been thinking? Did she think that she was just going to hop on the back of his bike, that instantly they'd be together, that she'd be transformed into the fucking queen of Charming? She was such an idiot.

Tara thumbed the edge of her chemistry textbook, willing herself to stop thinking about this, to focus on anything else, anything other than him. There was only one way out of this place, and it was not Jax Teller.

_Don't call me daughter, not fit to  
__The picture kept will remind me  
__Don't call me daughter, not fit to be  
__The picture kept will remind me…_

The light at Fremont tripped from yellow to red as Jax brought his bike to a stop. Normally, he would have just run it, but he wasn't in much of a hurry to be home. He could already play out how it would go: his mom, after hours of stewing in whatever drama she had concocted in her own head, would progress to full-on police-sergeant-style questioning. No doubt she had called Opie's house, hoping to catch him out in some way. Thank God for Piney; that thin-lipped old bastard would never give up Jax, even if it meant lying his ass off.

Clay wouldn't say a thing, of course. He knew better than to try to pretend he was anything more than a bystander in the push-pull dynamic of Jax and his mom.

It was still hard to believe his mom had married Clay, so soon after his dad had died. Even now, nearly a year since they had moved in, he couldn't quite get used to living in Clay's house. There was just something off about it, the darkness of the rooms and the furniture, the fact that all the pictures of his parents, _his family_, that had hung framed in the hallway of their old house, had not made the trip with them. All his dad's stuff had been packed up and put in storage, now sitting alongside boxes labeled "Baby clothes" and "Tommy."

A part of him understood why his mom had done it. Gemma Teller had been the first old lady of SAMCRO. Clay Morrow was the new president. And they had all been close, even when his dad was alive, Clay coming over all the time for Sunday dinners, to work on some new project in the garage with his dad. Now that his dad was gone, his mom was just pulling the circle closed.

A part of him hated her so much he wanted to scream.

The light turned; Jax eased off the brake and gassed the engine. He breathed deeply into the early evening air, closing his eyes for a brief moment as he felt the rush of air build on his face. This was what he loved, the feeling of him and the bike, the freedom and power, the elemental mix of wind, road, metal, and his own consciousness. On some level, he wished he could live the rest of his fucking life on the back of his bike.

For a moment, his mind flashed to last night's ride, the sensation of floating in the darkness, her arms around him like an unspoken promise.

Jax had tried not to think of her too much over the course of his shift, which wasn't that hard on a busy day like today, but he had found, on occasion, that he was distractedly recalling the softness of her hair, the tiny curl of her lip as she smiled, wondering what she was up to.

She had been quieter this morning than she was the night before, probably weirded out by waking up next to a near-stranger, but he found he liked her in the quiet just as much as he liked listening to her talk. After a nearly silent ride back to town, the morning sun sharp in his eyes, he found her street, driving up towards the house she had pointed to, only to have her ask to get dropped off a couple houses down.

The sunlight had caught behind her as she had stepped off the bike, illuminating her body, her hair, her face, with a flaming gold and auburn halo. He drank her in, without her even noticing.

The feeling that had pounded into his chest as he looked at her was strange and entirely unexpected. Instinctively, he had felt the urge to shake it loose, to pull away and take off running. And so even with her standing there, looking like she finally wanted to say something, he could only turn his gaze back towards the road, and hurriedly escape into its emptiness.

All day, she had sat like a question in the back of his mind, a question he both wanted to ignore and felt a desperate need to answer. Ignoring it would be the easier path, he knew, but as he got closer and closer to home, Jax found he was _excited_ by the prospect of seeing her again.

Traffic was pretty much nonexistent as he made his way into his neighborhood. So no one was there to notice as he pulled a U-turn in the middle of an intersection and began to guide his bike back towards the east side of town.

_Don't call me daughter, not fit to  
__The picture kept will remind me  
__Don't call me daughter, not fit to be  
__The picture kept will remind me  
__Don't call me  
__The shades go down  
__The shades go down  
__The shades go, go, go_

Her eyes hurt. She squeezed them shut, then open again, and tried make sense of the words written in tiny print that seemed to stretch on forever.

"_...the effect of temperature on reaction rate can be explained in terms of kinetic theory. Recall from Chapter 5 that raising the temperature greatly increases the fraction of molecules having very high speeds and hence high kinetic energies. These are the molecules that are most likely to react when they collide. The higher the temperature, the larger the fraction of molecules that can provide the activation energy required for reaction..."_

As she was reading the passage over again, a knocking shook her window. Tara looked up, and for a second, she thought it might be the wind or a tree branch, but it rattled again. And then she heard it a third time. She shoved her book off her lap and made her way over to the window, pushing aside the half-drawn curtain. The early evening sky had lit up in a wash of pink and orange. And there was a face on the other side of the glass.

_Oh, fuck. What was he doing here? _With a rush of nerves and shaky fingers, she unlatched the window and pushed it up. He was just _so close_, divided from her only by the flimsy wire screen.

"What are you doing here? Sorry, shit, I mean… Hi…"

"Hi," Jax said, as he smiled at her. He was still wearing the flannel, along with a black leather motorcycle jacket. "So, yeah, I just wanted to make sure you were okay."

"Why wouldn't I be?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "So... you wanna go hang out?"

She stared at him for a moment, her mouth slightly agape, until she gathered the presence of mind to shut it. Her brain was running on such a literal level – mostly at the shock of seeing him here – that she didn't even think of the implications of his question before she answered.

"Well, I'm kind of studying for my Chem final. And, technically, I'm grounded."

"For last night?"

She nodded.

"So, you can't go out?"

"Well, I mean for school, I guess. But not at night."

He seemed to consider this for a moment.

"So, can I come in, then?" _What the fuck? Was he really asking her that?_

"You want to hang out here with me?" she asked, in disbelief.

"You're not gonna get in trouble, right?"

"Uh… Well, my dad's just down the hall." She had already done the evening's math. A three-hour A's game, divided by the six-pack of beer he had sitting on top of the coffee table. She was probably in the clear for a while.

_But… But…_ Some tiny part of her screamed out in warning. He was here, _he was here_, but what did he really want with her, after all? He clearly had come here for _some_ reason. As the moment stretched on, she could feel herself being torn between excitement and self-preservation. _But…_ The thing was, no matter what he said, no matter how good he looked, dangerous and devastating standing there in his leather jacket, like hell Tara was going to be just another girl left in his wake. When it came down to it, if she let this happen, it would never, ever end well.

"Yeah… It's probably not a good idea. And I've got stuff I have to finish, so…"

And there it was. Safe. Sad. Her life, in a nutshell.

His face fell a bit, as if this was a totally unanticipated turn of events, but he recovered and gave her a tight-grinned little smile.

"Okay," he said, nodding. "Yeah… well… I'll see you around, Tara." He looked at her one last time before turning and taking off into the side yard. She heard the groan of the wooden yard gate, the metal gate latch as it smashed back into place. Soon enough, she would hear the ignition catch on his bike, the rumble of the engine as it faded away into the night.

She knew she could run outside, try to catch him before he drove off, but she knew she wouldn't. She would continue to stand in front of her open window, the light fading from the blue-black sky, telling herself that everything would be fine, telling herself to feel nothing at all.


	4. Wonderwall

_**A/N: So, if you haven't figured it out already, I have a soft spot in my heart for music from the mid-90s. Not to be overly nostalgic, but it really was the best, wasn't it? And while I'm at it, a big thanks to all the readers, followers, and reviewers out there – the feedback has been awesome!**_

_Today is gonna be the day  
__That they're gonna throw it back to you  
__By now you should've somehow  
__Realized what you gotta do  
__I don't believe that anybody  
__Feels the way I do about you now..._

Something felt off, even though at first it was hard for Tara to tell exactly what it was. The morning hallway held the faint trace of industrial cleaning products, and echoed with the groans of lockers opening and closing, with the occasional squeals of excited female greetings. But there was a faint murmur taking shape in the air, and as she grabbed her English and chemistry textbooks out of her locker and stuffed them in her backpack, she turned slightly to see that people were looking at her. Not directly, of course: they glanced over, looked away quickly, swiveled their heads over to whisper to their friends, and then glanced at her again. As she made her way down the hallway, dozens of eyes subtly – and then not-so subtly – followed her, muffled conversations following in her wake.

It hit her like a sucker-punch. _There were worse things than being invisible._

If only she could make it to her first class. At least in class, she would be safe. For fifty five minutes, nothing could get to her.

Inside her English room, half the desks were already filled, everyone noisily catching up from the weekend, talking about prospective summer plans. Tara walked down her row, briefly twisting sideways so she could make it past a boy with his legs splayed wide into the open aisle.

As she squeezed by, he put his hands up in the air, curling them loosely, and flipped his wrists back and forth as he made a low revving sound deep in the back of his throat. She whipped her gaze over to him, taking in his louche posture, the easy smirk on his face. "What?" he said, casually, innocently. "I heard you like motorcycles."

She pitched herself into her seat, her face on fire, listening to the combined male laughter behind her. For four agonizing minutes, she sat silently, staring off at nothing, letting her long, dark hair fall around her like a shield. But even after the bell rang, even after Mrs. Levitt finally appeared and then started going on about their final exam next week, there was no relief. Tara couldn't even listen, even though she knew she should. She could only feel her heart folding and refolding into tiny pieces, overwhelmed by the realization that her one refuge from all the other shit in her life, the one place she could actually feel half-way decent about herself, was now completely fucked up. _She had to get out of this room._ And then she had to make it through the rest of the goddamn day.

The minute hand of the clock turned little by little, each drawn-out click a victory.

As soon as the bell sounded, she jumped out of her seat, hoping to quickly make it to the door before anyone could say anything else to her. But as Tara sped down the row of desks, other students began packing up their bags and spilling into the space, and she caught a girl's outstretched elbow, jostling them both off-balance.

"Hey, watch it," the girl said, readjusting her backpack strap over her shoulder, and then turning back to the friend she had been talking to. And then Tara heard it, even though it was said low, clearly just meant for the few people nearby. "Stupid slut."

She held it together long enough to get to the door. To get to the hallway with its endless stream of noise and movement. To get past the exterior side doors and down the long concrete path that led towards the gym and the auditorium.

In the open air, without so many people, she felt like she could breathe a little better. A few minutes passed as she stood alone on the concrete. A bell rang, and she absently realized she was supposed to be in Chemistry. But she couldn't go back in. _She couldn't._ But what was she supposed to do? The prospect of going home – the long walk, the empty house – held nothing for her. Home wasn't even really home. It was sad and it was awful and it was killing her. She could feel her eyes tightening with the beginning of tears; she took a few deep breaths, holding them in her chest.

_Where could she go?_

She glanced around. Two pay phones were bolted into the external wall of the building. Attached to one was a tattered, but intact, phone book.

She walked over to the phone, carried by nothing she could recognize as rational thought, and started thumbing through the book. Towards the end, she found what she was looking for. Picking up the receiver, heart thumping against her ribs, she inserted a quarter into the slot and started dialing.

_Back beat, the word is on the street  
__That the fire in your heart is out  
__I'm sure you've heard it all before  
__But you never really had a doubt  
__I don't believe that anybody  
__Feels the way I do about you now..._

Jax leaned over the Triumph, pumping the break lever and watching the fluid drain out, keeping an eye out for when the liquid changed from brown to clear. Sometimes he couldn't understand why people just didn't do this shit themselves. Bikes came with manuals. It wasn't as if this was all that fucking hard.

He sighed. He knew he was in a shitty mood. It had been this way since Saturday night, and even hanging out with Ope all day yesterday, riding up into the hills, getting in a little target practice by shooting up empty beer cans, hadn't done much for him. He had thought maybe working might help, but all morning he found himself getting annoyed at random shit, feeling at the moment like little more than a glorified grease monkey.

The phone rang in the office. Probably another idiot who couldn't be bothered to figure out their own machine.

"Prospect…" yelled Chibs, his brogue lengthening with volume. "Get the phone." Jax released the lever and jogged over towards the office. "And a fooking sandwich, while you're up."

Chibs absolutely loved giving him shit. Jax would have said something nasty back, but with the phone ringing, he settled for offering the Scotsman a narrow-eyed glare and the finger.

"Teller-Morrow Automotive Repair."

The voice was really quiet at first. "Can I talk to Jax, please?"

"Yeah, this is Jax."

"Hi…" With the way she said it – even quietly – he knew exactly who it was. He could feel his heart beat a little faster.

"Tara?"

"Yeah…" She paused, and he hastily tried to figure out why the hell she might be calling him. And then she started talking, very fast. "So, um, you remember how you asked me the other night if I wanted to hang out?" He nodded, even though on some level he must have known she couldn't actually see him. "And I said I couldn't?... Well, I can now."

"Now?" he asked in confusion. "Aren't you at school?"

"Yeah."

"And you wanna hang out… right now?" There was some vital piece of all this he was clearly missing, but he didn't see it.

"Yeah."

"Uh, did something happen?"

This was obviously the wrong question, as her tone noticeably shifted. "You know, forget it, this was stupid…" She began to sound more and more upset, an edge of desperation crowding into her voice that reminded him of when they had first met. "I'm sorry I bothered you at work…"

She sounded like she was about to hang up. And he really didn't want that to happen. Because despite all the weird-ass, hot-then-cold vibes she had been giving off, he could tell she was asking for something. Asking _him_ for something. And whatever it was, he wanted to give it to her, badly.

"Wait, wait, don't go…" he said. "Look, I can come get you, if you want, and we can go somewhere. Let me just finish up here. Give me fifteen minutes, okay?"

"Okay." Her voice had gotten quiet again.

"I'll meet you out back, by the parking lot."

"Okay… Bye." And then the line went dead.

He walked back to the Triumph and started cleaning up, wiping down his tools.

"What was that?" Chibs asked.

"Clay called. Had some club business." Jax went over to the staff lockers, threw off his gray Teller-Morrow work shirt and replaced it with a long-sleeve t-shirt and his cut. "Yeah, so, I gotta run over to Vallejo. May not be back for a while." He knew he was lying off his ass. He knew would probably get caught and end up in deep, deep shit. But the thing was, right now, he didn't care.

_And all the roads we have to walk are winding  
__And all the lights that lead us there are blinding  
__There are many things that I would  
__Like to say to you  
__But I don't know how..._

She had tried to stay unobtrusive as she waited, leaning flat against the outside wall of the gym, the brick rough against her back. But as the minutes passed by, Tara began to grow more and more confident in the realization that no one was going to catch her, no random teacher or administrator, no ridiculously late student sprinting by in the hope of making it to the remainder of 2nd hour. She was nearly free.

She heard the bike before she saw it, a rumble of exhaust and raw mechanical power. Standing on her tip-toes, she watched him slow and turn into the lot, weaving his way down a row full of compact sedans and the occasional pickup truck. He was wearing dark sunglasses and a black leather vest she had seen him in before, "Sons of Anarchy California" curving across the back in giant capital letters and a grinning skeleton in the center. The sight of him in the leather of his club was disarming, sending a stab of panic into her chest. There was a reason she had always been so wary of him. But as he wheeled up to the curb and took off the glasses, giving her a crooked half-smile, the fear was crowded out by a heady mixture of nerves, excitement, and relief.

She scrambled towards him and jumped up on the back of the bike, securing her backpack across her shoulders and throwing on the helmet he had removed and was now offering to her.

"Everything okay?" _It was, now. _

"Yeah, can we please just get out of here?"

"Sure thing, darlin'."

She pulled her arms around him, feeling the imprint of leather and embroidery against her cheek. And with a turn of the throttle, they were off, tires squealing against the asphalt of the lot. _Fuck this place. Fuck them all. _She didn't even bother to look back.

They drove through town for a few blocks, with no apparent destination, stopping only as a red light brought traffic to a halt.

"So where'd you want to go?" he asked over the sound of the engine.

"Don't know," she replied, feeling strangely honest. "Hadn't really gotten that far."

He nodded and pursed his lips together; it was almost as if she could see him thinking.

"You hungry?"

She wasn't, really, but what the hell? At this point, she would resign herself to just going along with whatever he had in mind. Despite every reservation, every warning bell, every red flag flapping steadily in the breeze, she realized that, on some truly inexplicable level, she trusted him.

"Yeah, sure."

"You like pizza?"

"Yeah."

"Cool… I know a place."

He made a left-hand turn at the light, accelerating rapidly into the cross-street. The late morning sun and the wind traced warm and cool across her skin.

As they made it towards the outskirts of town, part of her started to wonder where exactly they were going, but the thought was lost as she was mesmerized by the immediacy of the landscape rushing by beside her, straight-lined agricultural fields overflowing with lush rows of cultivation. Soon enough, this began to give way to expanses of wild mesquite and creosote, the single-lane road running parallel with a placid blue-gray river spanned by industrial bridges. After a little while, she felt the bike shift over into the right lane, moving onto the on-ramp, while a dark green marker reading "California 4, WEST" whipped briefly in and out of her line of sight.

_Because maybe  
__You're gonna be the one that saves me  
__And after all  
__You're my wonderwall..._

God, the day could not have turned more perfect. The slight chill and lingering fog of the early morning had burned off, leaving the sky bright and clear, traced only with the barest wisps of clouds. The hills shone like green and gold velvet far in the distance. Jax had the wind in his face, and a girl at his back. _Fuck, it was heaven._

They had been out on the road for a while, winding their way past bedroom communities, golf courses, overgrown suburban shopping centers, and at this point she was no doubt wondering where the hell they were going, probably rethinking that decision to call him in the first place. He grinned a little to himself.

The thing was, Jax had never been a real plan-ahead kind of guy. Most of his life was ruled by instinct, which luckily for him was always fairly reliable. But damn if he wasn't proud of the flash of inspiration that had come to him as they had sat waiting at that red light. He knew he'd have to play the whole thing out just right, though.

Because, he could finally admit to himself, he wanted to impress this girl, to make her see that he wasn't some dumb biker drop-out. Why this really mattered, he couldn't really say. He had never put half this much thought into a girl before – he hadn't ever really needed to – and the mystery of his pull towards her was something he could not see himself unravelling any time soon. Even stranger was the realization that he wanted to make her happy. He could tell that something bad had happened this morning, even if he might never get it out of her, and in the absence of people he could punitively kick the shit out of, he would settle for helping her forget about it.

_Man, what the fuck was happening to him? She was turning him upside-fucking-down. And he hadn't even kissed her. _

The highway emerged out of a low-lying industrial area and opened to an expansive vista, the wide sweep of the bay and the city beyond coming into view. He could feel her body shift and tense behind him – _with fear? excitement?_ – as they made their way onto the upper level of the bridge, steel girders flashing by in quick succession.

Narrow glass and stone skyscrapers loomed off to the right, overshadowing the long piers that stretched like fingers into the water of the bay. Once across the bridge, he made the first exit right, taking the curve fast, leaning hard into it, only slowing as they merged with the surface streets. A middle-aged woman in a red hatchback ambled along in the lane next to him, staring openly; he looked over and gave her his widest shit-eating grin.

Passing across the wide expanse of Market and into downtown, he threaded through a succession of one-way streets, the tall buildings on either side blocking out the sky. Only once he had found the pyramid-shaped tower and the diagonal street that ran north from it could he breathe a little easier, relieved that he had been able to find his way here on the basis of just a few memories and a better-than-decent sense of direction. A few blocks up, he veered off to the right side of the street and wheeled the bike into an open space behind a parked car.

She let go of him and stepped off the bike – he could feel the back of his cut still warm from her – and as she took off his helmet, she gazed around in astonishment, taking in the little cafes with seating spilling onto the sidewalk, the pastel-colored row houses, the small Italian flags painted against the streetlight poles. He couldn't stop looking at her.

"So… I told you I knew a place," he said, smiling like an idiot.

_Today was gonna be the day  
__But they'll never throw it back to you  
__By now you should've somehow  
__Realized what you're not to do  
__I don't believe that anybody  
__Feels the way I do about you now..._

They were strolling side-by-side down the sidewalk, talking about nothing in particular, but Tara found that her gaze kept drifting towards the partially-reflective windows of the shops and restaurants on her right. God, all she wanted to do was look at him. But looking at him the way she really wanted to would have been too direct, too clear a statement of her interest, and through the mirrored surfaces she could catch long glimpses of him, the easy saunter of his gait, the way he tucked his hair behind his ears, the slight tilt of his head when he was listening to her.

Jax was full of surprises. Which had thrown her, entirely.

She would have never predicted that he had the imagination – or desire – to bring her all the way out here, not really so far on a map, but a world away from their small town lives. It was almost as if he were trying to prove something. But what would he have to prove to anyone?

They had stopped for some slices of pizza in a tiny, punked-out place off the main street – he had insisted on paying for her – and walked with their lunch up to the wide green of a nearby park, where they sat and ate and talked. She told him about her plans for summer – part-time job, SAT prep – and he mentioned that he and his best friend were trying to scrounge together the cash to buy and restore an old Harley. She gathered the courage to ask about his leather vest – his cut, he called it – and he told her how he wore it even though he wasn't a full member of the club yet, but how eventually he would be voted in, how his dad and some other guys had started the whole thing back in the sixties, like a real brotherhood where everyone always had your back. In the warmth of the May sun, he had pushed his long sleeves up near his elbows, and she could see the tattoo filling up his forearm, his dad's name on a tombstone blazed in ink. She wondered if she should ask him about it, but she hesitated, not knowing if this subject would bring a halt to the easy back-and-forth they had so far been enjoying.

He had suggested they walk around a little after they finished eating, which was fine by her, if only he hadn't been quite so distracting.

They passed by another set of wide windows, books piled high on display inside. She looked up at the name of the store, vaguely recalling it from a time she had long since tucked away in the safe corners of her mind.

"I know this place," she said as she stopped in front of the window. "My mom always talked about it." He looked at her in confusion. "It's famous," she explained. "Everyone hung out here in the sixties."

"Do you wanna go in?"

"Is that okay?" This didn't seem like something he would be all that into. The last thing she wanted to do was drag him around someplace he didn't want to be.

"Yeah, sure, if you want."

His interest seemed genuine enough, but as they went in and walked around, it was clear he didn't spend much time in bookstores. He seemed cagey, restless, unsure of what to do with himself. At first, he stuck by her, trailing behind as she moved from section to section, but then he seemed to get that it was making her nervous. She walked over to look at a volume of Beat poetry featured on the end of an aisle, and realized after a few moments that he was gone. It was only after she wandered around a bit more, turning around a corner, that she found him standing in front of a bookcase, scanning the shelves absently. Wearing his cut, in this place, there was something strange and dangerous about him, like a panther prowling around a petting zoo. He picked up a small pink-covered paperback, examined the front and back cover, and then put it back down, walking off in a different direction.

After he was gone, she went over to the shelf and looked for the book he had picked up. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. _Of course. _Impulsively, she grabbed it.

After finishing up at the register, she saw through the window that he was waiting outside. Sneaking up on him on the sidewalk, she fished the paperback out of the store bag and lightly smacked him across the chest with it. "Here," she said.

"What's this?" he asked, turning the book over in his hands.

"I saw you looking at it inside."

"I don't really read, Tara." He paused. "I mean, I _can_ read… I just… don't."

"I dare you to read two pages of it." She was sassing him, _she was sassing Jax Teller_, and fuck if she wasn't kind of enjoying it.

He looked down at the book again, quickly flipped the pages with his thumb, and then jammed it in his back pocket. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. _Well, maybe he would read it later. _

"C'mon, let's go," she said, grabbing his sleeve and pulling him in her direction as she walked.

"What, you gonna take me to a library next?" he joked. She halted so she could shoot him a mock-elbow to the gut, and as he caught her by the arms, they collapsed into laughter.

_And all the roads that lead you there were winding  
__And all the lights that light the way are blinding  
__There are many things that I would  
__Like to say to you  
__But I don't know how..._

The first evening stars were starting to rise along the eastern horizon as they drove home along the half-empty road. Jax had meant to get them back earlier, but they had waited too long and traffic had been snarled all the way to Concord. It had been worth it, though.

After lunch, he had driven west, curving up the parkway into the stillness of the Presidio, finally ending up at the base of the bridge by the old fort. They stood out on the narrow sea wall for a while, not really saying much, staring off into the deep frothy waters of the bay, the distant green shoreline, the powerful and graceful lines of the bridge that separated them from the ocean beyond. The breeze had whipped against her long hair, and he had wanted so badly to touch her. Something stopped him, though, some check on his impulses he hadn't even known he possessed. Any other girl, and Jax would have made a move long ago. But there was a steady hand required here, and he had worked on enough complicated machines that he could understand a need for deliberation and patience.

She had glanced over at him, her dark eyes calm and clear, and smiled widely, and at that moment, he had known he had made the right decision.

What would happen now was unclear. Once he dropped her off, how would he be able to see her again? If she wasn't allowed to go out – today's little adventure clearly violating that rule – would he try to hang out with her at her house, with her dad around? Or could he just call her? _For fuck's sake,_ _he had never called a girl in his life. _

He focused in on a pair of headlights floating behind them a split second before he saw the flashing of red and blue, heard the familiar siren wail. He slowed down a little, hoping he had at least been near the speed limit, watching the lights come closer and closer in his mirrors.

As he brought the bike to a stop on the shoulder of the road and cut the engine, she straightened up a little behind him, edging slightly away, as if she were worried about being caught sitting so close to him. The car was now stopped twenty yards back, and Jax could recognize it as California Highway Patrol. Shit, five miles further and it probably would have been San Joaquin County; Clay could have taken care of the whole thing, no problem. _Fuck… Clay._ By now, he realized, they would have figured out he had gone AWOL, that he had lied to Chibs about taking care of business for the club. And no doubt his mom would find out everything. _Fuck_.

He laid all that aside as he heard the patrol officer walking up to them.

"Good evening, officer," he said in the best altar boy tone he could muster.

"License and registration, please."

Jax rifled through the glove box and his wallet, handing over both items.

"'Jackson Teller,'" the officer read from the license. "You know why I pulled you over?"

"No, sir."

"I'm sure you're aware that it's against California state law to operate a motorcycle without wearing a helmet."

"Oh, ah, right," he replied, his mind spinning furiously. "See, the thing is, officer…" He nodded his head back towards Tara. "She really wanted to go out for a ride on the bike. I mean, _really_ wanted to go. But I only had the one helmet." He dropped his voice into a low intonation. "You know how it is, man…"

The officer sized him up in a single glance, his long hair, his leather cut. He uncapped a pen and started writing on his citation pad.

"The fine can be paid in person or by mail. You have the right to contest this violation. Failure to pay the fine or to appear in order to contest the violation will result in having a warrant issued for your arrest." He ripped the ticket off the pad and handed it to Jax. And then he grinned. "Have a nice night, son."

Once he heard the crunch of the car's tires hard against gravel, Jax thrust the ticket into his pocket and rubbed his palms roughly across his face. Kicking the stand into place, he pushed himself up over the seat, needing to be off the bike for a minute, needing to pace off some of his mounting anxiety. He took a couple deep breaths and stared into the darkness of the eastern sky.

"You were a lot more polite than I thought you'd be." He turned around to see she was leaning against the bike, his helmet draped across the fender. He was beginning to appreciate the fact that his frustrations seemed to vanish whenever he looked at her.

"Well…" he said, half-smiling as he walked over to her, "I had company." But he could tell she was actually surprised he had been able to handle himself. "Seriously, what'd you think I was gonna do? Start wailing on him and then light the patrol car on fire?" he asked, almost laughing. At this point, he was just messing with her, finding the whole thing pretty funny.

"No, I mean…" Her face was growing pink as she tried to backtrack. It was ridiculously endearing. "I didn't think… You know, you're just really different from how I thought you were… And I didn't mean..." The flow of her words was like a landslide. He knew it would go on and on until he stopped it. So he leaned forward and put his lips on hers.

_I said maybe  
__You're gonna be the one that saves me  
__And after all  
__You're my wonderwall  
__I said maybe  
__You're gonna be the one that saves me  
__You're gonna be the one that saves me  
__You're gonna be the one that saves me_

She didn't understand. They were just standing there. They had been talking. He was talking, and she was talking, and now he was so close, and he was kissing her. It didn't make any sense at all.

But his lips were warm and firm, and a tiny hush of his breath pressed against her mouth, like a wave meeting the shore. She couldn't think. She couldn't move. Everything was _right there_, in the space between them. A moment passed. And then he pulled away.

"Sorry…" he said, as if anything he had done could possibly be considered _wrong_.

"No, it's okay…" she stammered. "I just…" And then, unthinkingly, she moved up towards him, finding him, taking him by surprise, her lips moving against his, their faces angling slightly, her mouth parting a little in unconscious invitation. His hands found the narrow of her waist, palms heavy and fingertips light as air. She threaded her arms up around his neck, softly clutching the nape of his neck, his hair, tugging him down towards her. In response, he almost seemed to growl into her, pulling her deeper into his embrace, the warmth of their collision transforming into heat.

At that moment, she could feel him pull back a little, as if wary of what might have followed, although his arms were still tight around her, his face still flush with hers. She felt the warmth of his breath against her cheek.

"So…" he said.

"Yeah…" she murmured back.

"We should probably go, huh?"

She nodded. It was as if there weren't any words at all, anywhere. She slowly unclasped her hands from around his neck and they got back on the bike, their bodies reuniting again as she positioned herself close behind him. It was so strange: even though she could count on one hand the number of times she had sat behind him like this, it felt so natural, so real, like a part of herself she had somehow forgotten.

As the engine was warming up, he looked back towards her. "So, can I call you tomorrow night?"

"Yeah... okay."

_Tomorrow. What was tomorrow?_ In a heady rush, it all came back to her: the assholes this morning, the classes she ditched, the administrative phone call that was most likely made to her father several hours ago. It was all waiting for her when she got back. But not until the moment she let go of him. Until then, she was free.

"Jax…" she said, trying to get the words right. "Thank you… for today."

"Any time," he replied, and then he accelerated into the darkness.


	5. Dumb

_I'm not like them  
__But I can pretend  
__The sun is gone  
__But I have a light  
__The day is done  
__And I'm having fun  
__I think I'm dumb  
__Maybe just happy  
__I think I'm just happy  
__I think I'm just happy  
__I think I'm just happy..._

Everything was quiet as he drove up; minivans sat unobtrusively under dark carports, warmly-lit living rooms filled with recliners and big-screen TVs shone into the street like beacons. The overhead light was on the garage as he pulled into the driveway and parked next to his mom's Lincoln. Clay was kneeling over the cement floor, his focus on the layer of polish he was applying to the front fender of his Harley. He didn't bother to look up as Jax walked by.

"How was Vallejo?" he asked, even though his graveled voice didn't hold the trace of a question. Jax knew he shouldn't even bother answering. "Go see your mom," Clay said. "We'll talk later."

_Shit. This was bad. _He hadn't really expected much in the way of screaming and yelling from Clay, but this dismissal, where he simply left Jax to stew for some extended period of time, was not what he had imagined at all.

Inside the house, he found his mom in the living room, folding laundry with a lit cigarette in her hand. It was a wonder she hadn't burned the whole place down. She looked over towards him momentarily, appraising him, her eyes folded like a determined bird of prey, her hands never sitting still.

"You want to tell me where the hell you've been? I heard you left work in the middle of the day."

The thing with his mom was to tell her as little as possible, holding back any identifying details, and to stay calm despite any aggravating shit she might say. She always knew much more than she let on – as the first old lady, she commanded a network of town busybodies as her informants – but he never gave away very much voluntarily, not until he realized she was just waiting for him to tell her what she already knew. And he had learned from the early years of being a young teenage fuckwit that getting pissed off only made everything worse.

"Something came up." He leaned back against the wall that led to the kitchen, feeling the book Tara had bought pressing against him in his back pocket.

"_Something came up_," she repeated sarcastically. "Damn it, Jackson, we signed off on you leavin' school with the idea that you would be working, full-time, down at the garage. This is not some dipshit after-school job you can just ignore whenever you feel like. You have real responsibilities."

Offering some kind of vague agreement – without making actual promises – also tended to be a pretty successful strategy.

"I know."

She turned towards him and took a drag from her cigarette.

"And don't think I forgot about your promise to take that GED class. You need to at least get something out of all those goddamn years of school."

He nodded. "Yeah, no, I know. Maybe over the summer." He took a cigarette out of the pack of Marlboros sitting on the coffee table and lit it, sticking it between his lips and inhaling deeply. Jax didn't smoke that often – he didn't even really like it that much – but he knew it irritated her a little when he took from her supply and then smoked right in front of her.

She sat down on the couch next to the pile of folded clothes and tapped her cigarette on the ashtray.

"But let's come back to this _something_ that was so important you had to take off in the middle of a shift. Does it happen to have a cutesy-ass name like Tiffany or Ashley? Maybe it's Ashlee with two 'e's at the end. Wouldn't that be adorable?"

One of his last-ditch tactics was to simply say nothing at all.

"Well?" she asked. "You might as well tell me. Half the town saw you driving around with her this morning."

Jax puffed out an exhalation of smoke through his nose.

"Okay, fine… I was with a girl. Is that what you wanna hear?"

She pursed her lips and tilted her head towards him.

"Was she good, at least? I hope it was worth it."

He felt the rip of anger first, before it was even a conscious thought in his head, but he willed himself to calm down, to take a drag on his cigarette and breathe.

"Damn it, Mom, don't."

"What, is this one _special_? She's got a magic pussy?"

The thing was, his mom said this kind of shit all the time. Her boundaries were pretty much nonexistent. But fuck if he could listen to her talk about Tara this way, even if she had no idea _who_ she was actually talking about. Offering her only a narrow, hard look, he silently leaned over to stub out his half-finished cigarette and turned away, starting to pace back towards his room.

"You know," she said as he walked away, "I would worry about you and the never-ending parade of pussy, but your father was exactly the same way when he was young. The thing is, at least he knew how to take care of his business."

Jax turned around, not even feeling it as his fist slammed into the wooden door frame, his voice harsh and barely controlled.

"Yeah, well, Dad took care of a lot of things, didn't he?"

_My heart is broke  
__But I have some glue  
__Help me inhale  
__And mend it with you  
__We'll float around  
__And hang out on clouds  
__And then we'll come down  
__And have a hangover  
__Have a hangover  
__Have a hangover  
__Have a hangover..._

The TV was on when she came in the door, a bright glow illuminating the walls of the living room. She could just hear the faint voice of the on-air announcer describing the wind-up, the pitch, the second strike call. Tara turned around the corner and glanced over at the screen; she couldn't quite tell where they were playing. Chicago, maybe? She used to watch all these games with him, so long ago. Other girls played dress-up, hosted tea parties for their stuffed animals. She had memorized the layouts of stadiums, starting lineups, batting averages.

"Looks like they're way up," she observed.

"McGwire just got a home run." His voice was flat, affectless. There was an open beer in front of him and a single empty sitting nearby. If he wasn't that drunk, the only possibility was that he was beyond pissed.

"How's he doing this season?" The longer she could keep him on this topic, the longer she had before he started yelling.

He didn't answer, but instead took a swig of his beer and then clicked off the game with the remote, the screen fuzzing and then going black. He stared at the lifeless TV, not even looking up at her.

"You're a real smart girl." He leaned fully back into the couch cushions. "Because, some days, you know, I just don't really understand things. It's good you're here to explain them to me." His voice was getting louder, more strident. "I don't really understand why I got a phone call from your school asking me why you missed almost all your classes today. Or why, after what we talked about this weekend, I came home to a goddamn empty house."

"I… I'm sorry," she stammered.

"Where the hell were you, Tara? Were you with that boy again?"

She could feel her face crumbling, so she held it tight, breathing fast through her nose, not letting a sound escape from her lips.

"You think if your mother were around, she would like this?" he snarled. "You throwing everything away, for what? So you can play hooky from school?"

"Don't talk about her," she murmured.

"What?"

"I said, don't talk about her…" she repeated, this time loudly. Something inside her broke. "You think if she were around, she would like _any_ of this? You sure she wouldn't rather be dead than come back to find everything like this?"

"Goddamn it, Tara…"

"_No_," she yelled, "I'm _not_ doing this with you. _Not now_." She took a breath and felt her ribs expand. "I'm sorry I missed class and that I wasn't home. But that's it. There isn't anything else to talk about."

Suddenly, she felt so tired. Had she only come in the front door a few minutes ago? Had it only been that long since she had stepped off his bike, feeling the final trace of him in the dark? All the warm sunshine of the day was gone. Standing there, on the faded carpet of her living room, it was like waking up after a wonderful dream you knew you would never get to go back to.

_Skin the sun  
__Fall asleep  
__Wish away  
__Soul is cheap  
__Lesson learned  
__Wish me luck  
__Soothe the burn  
__Wake me up..._

Jax rubbed the knuckles of his right hand. They were red, raw, but the skin wasn't broken. He regretted throwing the punch; hitting solid wood was almost always a mistake, and he hated losing control like that in front of his mom. Whether she was telling the truth about his dad he had no idea – and she did have a tendency to rewrite the past to suit her own purposes – but she was right about one thing: today he had done a shit job of taking care of his business. No matter how great a day he had spent with Tara, there were older ties he couldn't discard. Ties he shouldn't _want_ to discard.

He heard the door to the garage slam shut and then muffled conversation coming from the living room. Putting his hands together behind his head, wincing a little, he leaned back against the headboard and waited. _Wouldn't be much longer now._

Ten minutes passed as he sat in a heightened state of alert. And then another five. Not knowing what was going to happen was driving him crazy, like an itch too deep to scratch. _Would Clay chew him out in front of the brothers? Fire him? Kick him out of the club altogether?_ Jax squeezed his eyes closed.

He opened them to see his door swing open and Clay step in, filling up the empty space of the frame. He was carrying a sandwich on a plate.

Clay walked over and handed him the plate, and then moved over towards the old desk chair where Jax had thrown his cut. He held up the leather vest, brushing his thumb over the insignia of the center patch, and softly laid it over the back of the chair.

"Thought you'd want some dinner."

Grasping the plate but not touching the food, Jax put his feet down on the floor and sat upright facing his step-father.

"Thanks."

Clay took a seat on the chair, still not really making any eye contact with him, drawing out the quiet like a noose around his neck. He finally looked up, his eyes unyielding.

"What exactly did you think you were doing, son?"

The tension snapped in Jax's chest. "Don't call me that," he sputtered.

But it was as if Clay hadn't even heard him.

"Work at the garage is one thing – nobody gets to just take off whenever they feel like it – but the MC is something else. You understand?"

All Jax could do was nod.

"As brothers, we have to trust each other," he continued, his voice turning lower. "So the next time you use the club, use my name, as an excuse to get a little tail, I can promise you, you'll never wear these colors again." He ran his palm over the grain of the leather. And then he pulled something out of his front pocket.

"You want to be a member of this club? You want to be more than just a prospect? Then act like it." He tossed a small, black object over to Jax, who turned it over in his hands. It was a pager. "No running off, no losing sight of what matters. And when we call, you fucking answer, you got that?"

"Yeah." He couldn't believe it. Instead of kicking him out, Clay wanted him in deeper. Now he would be on call when they needed him, ready for more responsibilities than just the JV-level shit he was doing now. If he played it right, kept everything running smooth, he might even be fully patched in by the time he turned eighteen.

"Good. You're on shift tomorrow. You open and you close."

Clay stood and walked out, leaving Jax staring at the empty chair like a dumbass, the plate of food still sitting on his lap.

_I'm not like them  
__But I can pretend  
__The sun is gone  
__But I have a light  
__The day is done  
__And I'm having fun  
__I think I'm dumb  
__Maybe just happy  
__I think I'm just happy  
__I think I'm just happy  
__I think I'm just happy..._

She lay on her bed, too tired to do any work for school and too tired to get up and change her clothes so she could go to sleep. She glanced over at the clock; it wasn't even ten yet. Her stereo played softly and she focused on the sounds of the strumming guitar, shutting her eyes closed, just for a second.

She still hadn't even really processed the fact that they had kissed – _fuck, she had kissed him_ – on the side of the road, right after he had been pulled over by the police. The whole thing was so weird, and amazing, and unbelievable. Four days ago, he hadn't even known who she was, and now they were… _God, what were they?_

The phone rang, pulling her out of her reverie.

"Hello?"

"Yeah… hey, it's Jax."

"Hey…" she replied, sleepy and confused, but still excited to hear his voice. "I thought you were going to call tomorrow night."

"Yeah, I didn't really feel like waiting until then."

"Oh." _Shit, why couldn't she say something better than that? And why didn't he feel like waiting?_

"So… what are you up to?" he asked.

"Just hanging out. Listening to some music."

"What music?"

"Nirvana Unplugged." _Thank God it was something she wasn't embarrassed to tell him._

She rolled over on her stomach, careful to keep the handset close. The coiled cord draped across her back.

"Oh, yeah? That's a good album."

"Yeah…" she paused, trying to think of something interesting to say. "Sometimes it's hard to believe he's gone."

"Yeah, I know."

"You want to hear something crazy? My friend Michelle, her cousin took the bus all the way up to Seattle and filled up a heart-shaped box with dirt from his yard."

"That's kinda messed up."

"Yeah, well... yeah..." she said, her voice trailing off. "So, uh, what are you up to? Did anything happen with you being gone all day?"

"Nah, not really." She heard the casual toss of his voice, and couldn't really tell if he was telling her the truth or not. "But I probably shouldn't try it again any time soon."

_Shit, had he actually gotten in trouble?_ When she had called him, she hadn't really thought about the fact that he would have to leave work – she hadn't really been thinking about _anything_ – and now she realized what he had done in order to be with her all day.

"Yeah, you know…" she began, "I feel really bad for calling and asking you to take off and come get me. It wasn't fair to ask you to do that."

"No, it's fine… if I really couldn't have come, I would've said so."

"You're sure?"

"Yeah…" He paused, and she could hear him take a deep breath. "So you wanna tell me why you wanted to leave school?" _Was he actually asking her that? Because, no, she really, really did not. _

"Uh, it's kind of a long story."

"I got time."

"Well…" she said, drawing out the word.

"Yeah?"

"Well, um…" _God, was she really going to have to say it out loud?_ "Some people were kind of giving me a hard time for leaving that party with you."

"Wait, you got shit for leaving the party?" He sounded completely confused.

"I think it was more for what people thought happened _after_ we left the party."

"What?"

_He really didn't get it, did he? She was going to have to fucking spell it out for him. _

"Look… I mean…" She sighed. "Girls go places with you and things happen. Or, at least, people think they happen. And people thought that, after the party, you and I..." She trailed off, not having the courage to finish the sentence. Heat flushed across her cheeks. She was relieved that they were talking over the phone; she wouldn't have been able to say all that and then have to look at him. "And they weren't that nice to me about it."

The line went so quiet, she thought maybe he had hung up.

"What people?" His voice was laced with quiet fury. "Tell me who it was."

"It doesn't matter."

"Tara…"

"It doesn't," she pleaded with him. In a way, she was flattered by his reaction. She was also a little terrified. "And if it happens again, I'll just ignore it."

"If it happens again, I'm coming down to school and breaking some fucking kneecaps."

_I think I'm dumb  
__I think I'm dumb  
__I think I'm dumb  
__I think I'm dumb  
__I think I'm dumb  
__I think I'm dumb  
__I think I'm dumb  
__I think I'm dumb_

Jax unclenched the fist he was making and watched his palm turn from pale to pink as the blood rushed back in. He was surprised how quickly his temper had flared when she told him what had happened to her this morning. Because, honestly, before tonight, he had never given _any_ thought to what might have happened to the other girls he had been with, if afterwards someone might have thought less of them or treated them badly. Those girls knew what they were signing up for when they got with him – a good time, nothing more – and it never really seemed to slow them down. But with her, it was different somehow. She didn't deserve to be treated like shit, for any reason, and especially not because of him.

He was enjoying talking to her on the phone – that surprised him, too – and he liked the vision of her that was forming in his head, phone cradled next to her ear as she stretched out across her bed, music playing and posters of bands lining the walls of her room. The decision to call her had been totally impulsive, guided by some undefined urge to hear her voice one last time tonight, before tomorrow came and he was thrown back into the routines of his regular life.

There had been a moment, as she first answered the phone, when he feared that he might be overwhelming her with his attention, but she seemed to like talking to him as well – at least until he had gotten so angry. He ought to switch topics, find something a little easier to talk about.

"So are you still grounded?" he asked.

"Oh, _yeah_," she answered. He could almost see her smiling, biting her bottom lip distractedly.

"Did you get in any more trouble, 'cause of today?"

"Not really. But I should try to keep close to the rules for a while."

An idea began to take shape in his mind. After the conversation with Clay, he knew he would probably be working more hours, both in the garage and the clubhouse. But what if he could see more of her, too?

"So what are the rules, exactly?" he asked. "Do you have to go straight home after school?"

"I guess."

"But your dad wouldn't be home then?"

"No, not until 5:30 or 6, normally." Her voice started to take on an edge of wariness, as if she wasn't sure where he was going with his questions.

"So why don't you come by the garage for a while? Hang out?"

He waited for her reply, each second of silence killing him.

"Hang out at the garage? Don't you have to work?"

"I'll take a break," he replied.

"Are you sure? I mean, you left work because of me. People might be still be mad."

"It'll be fine. No one's gonna bother you. You could even bring your books and study." _Oh, shit, he was really pressing his luck with that one. _

"Yeah," she laughed, "I don't think I could get much studying done in a garage."

"Well, you know, think about it. It'd be fun."

"Uh, okay. I'll think about it." She paused. "So… I should probably get going. It's a school night, you know." She said this with mock authority, laughing again.

"Yeah, I know. I gotta open the garage tomorrow morning. So... I'll see you soon."

"Yeah, okay."

He waited to hear her hang up before he finally put the phone back on the hook. He stood up off the workbench stool, stretching a little, and then switched off the single bulb hanging over his head. Even in the near-darkness of the garage, Clay's polished bike gleamed black and silver, like a restless animal in the moonlight.


	6. Creep

_When you were here before  
__Couldn't look you in the eye  
__You're just like an angel  
__Your skin makes me cry  
__You float like a feather  
__In a beautiful world  
__I wish I was special  
__You're so fucking special…_

The afternoon sun slanted bright into her narrowed vision. Tara raised her palm up to her forehead to shade her eyes and the world came back into view. A hand-written address on a ripped piece of notebook paper stuck part-way out of her pocket, but she hadn't needed it. She had known exactly where she was going.

Her heart was tripping against itself as she made her way along the sidewalk, backpack thudding against her back pockets with each step. Her stomach was frozen solid. _Oh, this was such a bad idea. _

The yellow and red oval sign appeared on the right, at the end of the block.

After he had called, she had waited two days before finally scribbling down the address out of the kitchen phone book, the act a tiny promise to herself that she wouldn't chicken out. That had been this morning. Even so, after the final bell had rung and she had gathered up all her books from her locker, she found herself wavering. Everything about him was so new and wonderful and terrifying. She was still unsure of herself around him, of all the feelings provoked by his inexplicable interest in her. And, honestly, the idea of the garage kind of scared the shit out of her. All she could picture were huge men on Harleys, cigarettes dangling from their mouths, surrounded by the overwhelming sound of engine and exhaust. Although his description of the club had made it seem kind of _normal_, just a bunch of guys getting together, blowing off steam, totally different from her earlier notion of it as a dangerous Hells Angels-type biker gang. She hoped he was right.

She turned the corner onto a small driveway. On the left, the squat, sky-blue building recessed back, revealing an open lot with cars parked along a side fence and a row of bikes lined up against an iron railing. Signs and insignia were hanging everywhere. Sons of Anarchy M/C. Men of Mayhem. _Fuck, she really did not want to know what that last one meant. _The place didn't seem all that busy: two guys wearing black bandanas and sunglasses were hanging out around the bikes, a few tattooed women in low-cut tops were draped across plastic chairs under the shadowed overhang of the building in front of her. A younger-looking guy with a goatee in a gray work shirt walked out of the garage towards a sedan parked right in front, the driver's door fully ajar. He leaned into the car and started rooting around in the glove box.

"Uh, hi…" she said.

He turned around in the seat quickly, then stepped out to face her. She realized that she knew him. He had sat in the back row of her Biology class last year, at least until the second week of school, when Tara had transferred into the accelerated class.

"Can I help you with something?"

"Um, yeah, I was looking for Jax, actually…" She paused, pushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear. "He asked me to come by…" she added, fueled by some strange need to justify her presence there.

"Tara, right?"

"Yeah…" _Oh shit, had Jax been talking about her? Or did this guy just know her from school, too?_ "Did he say something?"

"No, I just…" he said quickly, stopping himself, and then walked over towards her. He seemed a lot taller closer up. And even though it was mid-May, he was wearing a dark knit cap over his shoulder-length brown hair. "I'm Opie."

"Oh, yeah, Jax mentioned you. I'm Tara."

"Right," he said, grinning. "I know."

"Oh, yeah… right." _Could she be any more of an idiot?_ "Sorry."

"Yeah, so he's working in the back…" He nodded his head in the direction of the garage. "I can go get him for you, if you want."

_But I'm a creep  
__I'm a weirdo  
__What the hell am I doing here?  
__I don't belong here…_

Jax leaned against the inside of the cement pillar, keeping in the recessed shade of the garage, as he watched the two of them talking.

He had been hoping she would show on Tuesday. He had gone through most of the day in a state of strange anticipation, anxiously watching the clock until three, and then thinking every female voice he heard was hers. All of Wednesday passed by the same way. He was thinking that if she didn't show today, she probably wasn't going to show at all, an idea that left him nursing a dull ache deep in his chest. But if she didn't come, he wasn't going to try to find her. He had done his part, calling her and asking her to hang out with him, but he did have some pride. He wasn't going to chase something that didn't want to be caught.

It was nice just to get an uninterrupted look at her for a minute. She looked so pretty and so young, standing there with her hair up, dressed in a striped t-shirt and cut-off shorts, long, pale legs ending in a pair of low-rise Vans. She was probably carrying half a library in that backpack.

She said something and Opie smiled at her, causing her to glance down and bite her lip, and Jax felt a stab of jealousy. He couldn't really understand it; nothing had actually happened, and he knew Opie was never the kind of guy to make a move on a girl Jax had expressed interest in. But something made him pick that moment to walk out of the garage.

"Hey, Tara…" he called out. He walked over, moving so he stood right in front of her, between her and Opie, and grasped her lightly on the hips, drawing her in towards him a little. She looked up at him, slightly shocked, but then her gaze held his in a tiny flash of heat. "I'm glad you came…" he said, letting go of her, and then he turned back so that he could face them both.

"Did you meet Ope?"

"Uh, yeah…" She nodded. "But we knew each other already, from school." She smiled a little, and he couldn't figure out why. "So Jax told me you guys are going to rebuild a bike this summer…?"

Opie grinned and nodded. "Yeah, yeah… See my dad, he knows this dealer, and he's got this 1941 cherry red Knucklehead he's gonna sell us. It's in shit shape, but cheap, right? And we can get the parts real easy, and the labor'll be free and…"

"Yeah, I think she's got the idea, man," Jax said, slapping his friend on the shoulder and smiling. When Ope went off on Harleys, it was hard to stop him. He turned over towards her.

"So you want a tour?" She had come at kind of a perfect time. It had been a slow afternoon without much work and only a few of the brothers were around.

"Yeah, sure," she replied, nodding, her dark eyes open wide.

As they turned towards the open garage, Jax looked over at Opie. "So we'll catch you later, right?" His friend nodded and shuffled back towards the Caprice in the drive, implicitly understanding that Jax meant for there to be only one guide on this tour.

Jax walked her into the open garage bay; it wasn't all that big, they only had space for three cars and a single surface lift, but there were a couple bikes in various states of repair sitting inside.

"So… this is the garage…" He turned back towards the left. "And back there is the office…"

A figure emerged from outside, taking shape in Jax's peripheral vision. He looked over quickly and saw that it was Chibs. _Shit. _Chibs had been weird and distant with him ever since Monday. He had accepted Jax's lame apology for lying about Vallejo, but hadn't really spoken to him at all beyond the regular beginning-of-shift work assignments. He was really hoping that Chibs would be cool and not accidentally scare Tara off too much, not that she wasn't clearly freaked out a little bit already.

And then he walked right up to them, taking off his sunglasses and hooking them into the front pocket of his cut.

"Seems we've got a visitor," he said, a cheerful lilt to his voice.

"So, uh, Chibs, this is Tara." Jax nodded back and forth between the two. "Tara, Chibs."

"You're a friend of Jackie-boy's?"

"Yeah," she replied, her voice quiet but steady. "He was giving me a tour."

"Well, then, don't let me interrupt." He leaned his head conspiratorially towards Jax. "Don't forget to show her the clubhouse." Chibs turned back over to her, lowering his voice to a stage whisper. "_The inner sanctum_…" And then he fucking winked.

Jax stared open-mouthed for a second as he watched Chibs walk towards the back of the garage and start busying himself with a rusted-out Honda in the corner. And then he turned back towards Tara, catching her staring at him, before she quickly glanced away. Her cheeks flushed pink.

"So, yeah, let's go check out the clubhouse…"

"No one's going to mind?" she asked.

"Nah… it's empty right now," he reassured her.

They walked out into the sunlight. It had gotten warmer out. _Maybe she was thirsty?_

"You want a soda or something?" He nodded towards the machine that stood outside in front of the office.

"Uh, yeah, sure…" she replied. "Whatever you got."

He jogged over to the machine and pumped a couple quarters in. Every light came up as empty except one. He pulled the cold can out of the bottom slot and brought it back to her. She had crossed her arms under her chest, hugging them against herself.

"So, all that was left was Cherry Coke… Sorry…"

"No, it's fine…" She opened the can and took a tiny sip, clearly waiting for him to do something.

So he reached over and grabbed her free hand, lacing his fingers through hers. Her gaze dropped down to where their hands were joined, and then rose up to meet his. Her face was so open, a little scared, but trusting. They were close enough he could see his own reflection in her eyes. _Shit, he was so glad she had come._

_I don't care if it hurts  
__I wanna have control  
__I want a perfect body  
__I want a perfect soul  
__I want you to notice  
__When I'm not around  
__You're so fucking special  
__I wish I was special…_

God, it was dark inside, all recessed lighting and wood-paneled walls. She let her eyes adjust and the space began to fully take shape in front of her. It seemed like a kind of homey bar, couches and dingy leather chairs arranged towards one side, a pool table towards the other, plaques and memorabilia lining the walls. A low-slung bar emerged on the right, with half-filled bottles of hard liquor arranged on the back shelves and a couple of kegs sticking out from under the counter.

"You play pool any?" he asked as they walked into the open space.

"Uh, not really." _God, she sounded so fucking boring. _"But, you know… I could learn."

"Cool," he replied, looking around, his eyes coming back to rest on her. "You wanna leave your stuff behind the bar?"

"Uh, will it be okay there?" Not that she didn't trust him. Or Opie. Or that guy Chibs from the garage. But as they had come in, they had walked around a group of four or five men in muscle shirts sitting on the shaded porch, nursing beers, and she had gotten such a collective look of raw appraisal that she had found herself grasping Jax's hand a little tighter, edging a little closer to him.

"Yeah, it's safe. Promise." He walked close behind her and edged the backpack strap off her shoulder. Grasping the nylon handle, he let it drop with an exaggerated pull, as if it weighed much more than he had expected. "You bringing rocks home from school now?" he teased her, smiling as he dropped the bag back behind the counter. She placed her half-finished soda down on a nearby table.

"I've got finals coming up next week," she replied cheekily. "Lots of rocks to study."

"Hmmm, I bet." His tone was playful, but there was something in the way he was looking at her. _Fuck, he was looking at her. Was he going to kiss her again? Right here?_ She remembered the feel of him, hard and soft under her hands, the scruff of his jaw prickling against her skin.

And then, just as quickly, he glanced to the side and the moment was over.

"So, uh, this is the main part of the clubhouse." Then he pointed to rooms towards the back, with windows that opened onto the larger space, lined with aluminum blinds. "And back there's the kitchen and the chapel."

"Like a church?" she asked in confusion.

His grin opened wide. "Uh, no, it's just… it's where the club meets. Officially."

"Oh," she replied, as if she understood, although she didn't really. Her gaze caught on the back wall, where she spied a bunch of framed pictures, tightly-spaced around each other. The wall was recessed, deep in shadow, and it was hard to see exactly what they were.

"C'mon," he said, as he grabbed her hand again and started walking towards the back.

As they approached the wall, a sign with hand-carved letters emerged at the top. _SAMCRO_. And then she saw the pictures. They were young, old, bearded, clean-shaven, wearing cuts, wife-beaters, bandanas wrapped around their foreheads. Some stood in front of charts marking their height in inches. Some were facing front and to the side, offering a disturbing double portrait. And some held placards with institutional numbers, written below the name of various law enforcement agencies.

She stopped right in front of them. "These are arrest photos…" She had meant it as a statement, but it came out almost as a question.

"Oh, yeah… It's kind of an inside joke."

"Are you up here?" As she asked, her eyes raced over the wall. _Please please please let him not be up there. _

She could feel him moving a little closer to her, his hand still grasped around hers.

"Tara…" She continued to stare at the wall, completely mesmerized. "Tara," he said a little more strongly, until she finally looked over at him. "I'm not… I've never been arrested."

"Okay," she replied, nodding slightly, on some level relieved to hear this, but still lost a little in thought. _What kind of club displays arrest photos like a fucking wall of honor?_

"Here…" he said, turning them away from the wall, towards a short hallway. "Let's go…"

She took a deep breath, trying to let go of her apprehension, and let him steer her along the hallway, until they finally came face-to-face with a pale blue Harley. It stood upright in a fully-lit, recessed space, like a piece in a museum. It was obviously really old, even though it was maintained and glossed to a high polish, and really special, given how it was displayed.

"So… this was my dad's." She glanced over at him. The way he had said it, the way he was gazing at the bike, she knew. This was what he had wanted her to see.

"It's beautiful," she said, and she really meant it. Before she had met him, she would never have thought of a motorcycle as having beauty, but this clearly did, the lines of it, the curves, the sheen of the metal.

"Yeah." He nodded a little, still staring at it, even as his eyes seemed to lose focus.

"It's nice that you have it here," she said. For a moment, she thought about her mom. "I wish I had something like this." He turned his head and looked down at her, his gaze curious and full of intent, as if he saw something that he had never really seen before and he was trying like hell to understand it. It was disconcerting as fuck.

She cleared her throat, hoping to lower some of the intensity. "So, uh… what else is back here?"

He looked back at the long hallway behind them.

"So a lot of these are dorm rooms."

"Doom rooms?" she asked. "Like at college?"

"Yeah… Sometimes one of the brothers needs a temporary place to crash. Or there are visitors from other chapters."

"Oh… that makes sense." She was filled with a strange impulse, born mostly from curiosity, which normally she would have ignored. Around him, though, giving rein to her impulses had seemed to be somehow working in her favor. "Can I see one?" she asked.

"Uh, sure," he said, and fished his keys out of his jeans pocket. They walked towards a door on the right and he unlocked it, throwing it open wide for her. She stood in the doorway and peeked in. It seemed pretty institutional: a tall wooden clothes cabinet, matching desk and chair, a side door that seemed to lead to a bathroom, and in the center, a neatly made bed.

It shouldn't have thrown her, but somehow it did. She was standing there, right next to him, close enough to feel his shirt sleeve graze her bare arm, and they were not ten feet away from a bed. Just the thought of it was… it was… She took a breath and knew he was looking at the same thing, thinking the same thing. She could hear the brush of his hair against his collar as his face turned down towards hers. His hand came up and cupped the back of her head, his fingers tracing into the column of her neck, his thumb smoothing the tiny hairs in front of her ear. Where he touched her, it made her want to shiver. She knew what would happen if she turned her face up and looked at him. She just wanted a second, one perfect second, before it happened.

Tara would never have considered herself very experienced. She had kissed guys before – including that one horrible time in 8th grade when her best friend's neighbor had tried to French kiss her in the back row of a movie theater and she had accidentally bitten his tongue – but there was very little she would remember all that fondly, or even that well. Compared to Jax... well, she shouldn't even bother making that comparison. She was just so awkward, with little of his easy confidence. But somehow he knew, _he just fucking knew_, how to make her feel like what she was doing was exactly right, that whatever she wanted was what he wanted, too. And she wanted._ God, she really, really wanted. _

She glanced up at him through her lashes – his eyes were _so_ blue – and then lifted her face, meeting him there, halfway, moving her body closer towards his. He was gentle with her, careful, tracing his lips against hers as if he was afraid she would break with the slightest pressure. It was sweet, but not anywhere near enough. She smiled against him and then pulled his bottom lip in between hers, pressing it gently at first, and then tugging at it with just the hint of friction. _Holy shit, how had she come up with that?_ This was all the encouragement he needed, apparently, as he moved his other hand up towards her waist and began to open his mouth against hers, warm and hungry, the edges of their tongues meeting, until she felt like there would never, _ever_ be enough.

She could feel him backing her up, stepping her further into the room. A part of her somehow knew that at any point, if she told him to stop, he would. But for right now, a larger part of her really wanted to see what was going to happen.

His hand reached back towards the door, as if to shut it closed. And then she heard it. Through the floor, she felt it. The reverberations of multiple motorcycles.

_But I'm a creep  
__I'm a weirdo  
__What the hell am I doing here?  
__I don't belong here  
__She's running out the door  
__She's running out  
__She run run run run  
__Run…_

He could feel her tense under his hands. And then his mind, coming back into control, recognized the sound that had made her react. _No no no no no no no. Not now. _The distinctive chugging pop and roar of at least four or five Harleys could only mean one thing: Clay had called a meeting and the brothers were all arriving.

Jax forced himself to step back from her a little, taking a couple quick breaths to even out his racing pulse, willing every part of his body to calm the hell down. He sucked against his bottom lip. _Damn, she had tasted just like fucking Cherry Coke. _

His hands moved up to her shoulders and he caught her gaze.

"So, uh," he said, his voice a little rough, "we should probably get outta here."

"Is everything okay? Are we going to get in trouble?"

"Nah, we're fine. But there's about to be a club meeting real soon, so, uh… " He really didn't want to finish that sentence, to tell her that she needed to leave. But things had been going so great – better than if he could have imagined – and he didn't want anything ruining it, not Clay, not the other brothers, not anyone.

He turned her back into the hallway, delicately easing his keys out of his pocket so he could lock up. As he pulled the door closed and caught one last glimpse of the bed, he exhaled sharply. _Fuck. That was… unexpected. _It had not even crossed his mind to try to take her to one of the empty rooms. Of course, it wasn't as if he hadn't ever used one for that purpose, but with Tara, he had mostly just been following her lead, and happily so. For a moment, he wondered what might have happened if they hadn't been interrupted, how far that path would have taken them. It was probably good that they had stopped. As they made their way down the hallway, he lightly traced an arm around her waist.

The main room of the clubhouse was still empty, but as Jax went to grab her backpack from behind the bar, he heard the front door open, light spilling into the darkened entryway.

Arguing and sniping at each other, as only club brothers could, they followed in quick succession. Clay, Bobby Elvis, Big Otto, Piney. One of them was yelling for Chibs out of the partially-open door.

Clay was the first to see him, and then, as his eyes scoped deeper into the room, to see her.

"Who's the jailbait?" he asked, loud enough so everyone could hear.

Jax turned towards Clay, moving so he blocked his step-father's view of her.

"She's a friend. And we were leaving."

"Ah, c'mon, sweetheart," Clay said, angling his head around Jax and grinning. "We don't bite… Promise."

Jax hoisted her backpack over his shoulder and tried to hustle her past the brothers and towards the front door. He wished he could say something to her, but it would have to wait until they got outside.

"Fine, then," Clay continued, clearly amused. "You go say goodbye to your _friend_. But you better be back here when we're done… And tell Chibs we're all waitin' for him!"

As they made their way outside, the light blinding just for a moment, Jax could make out the blurry shape of Tig parking his bike alongside the others. _Yeah, he definitely needed to get her out of here now. _The other brothers were mostly harmless, but there were some days when Tig just straight up scared the shit out of him. Some days, the look behind his eyes… there was just nothing there.

So instead of walking towards the right, into the main lot, he maneuvered them the other direction, past the fighting ring, along the raised concrete walkway that skimmed above the loading dock.

"So… you okay?" he asked, turning towards her. He had wanted her to meet the brothers eventually, but not this soon, and definitely not all at once.

"Yeah," she answered, although he couldn't quite tell if she was telling him the truth. Her face was angled slightly towards the ground. "Uh, I can take my bag back now…"

"Oh… yeah," he replied, pulling it off his shoulder and handing it over. While she was putting it on, he took another long look at her. She had unconsciously pushed out her bottom lip, soft and round, curved almost to a pout. _Fuck, he could drown in that softness. _All the women he knew – the girls he had been with, old ladies from the club, his mom – they were all hard edges. But not her.

"So, uh, why don't I run you home real quick?" he asked, as they walked towards the garage.

"Um, really?" She looked up at him. "Don't you have to be here when that meeting's over…?"

"They'll be a while," he reassured her. "And you don't live that far."

"Oh, okay," she said, nodding a little.

"Wait here a sec. I'm just gonna go run and tell Ope."

As he walked off in search of his friend, he did the calculations and told himself that it would all work out fine. Just lighting up their fucking cigars would take a good ten minutes. No way were they done in less than an hour. And now he could buy himself another fifteen minutes with her, the perfect feel of her weight against his back, her arms wrapped tight around him.

_Whatever makes you happy  
__Whatever you want  
__You're so fucking special  
__I wish I was special  
__But I'm a creep  
__I'm a weirdo  
__What the hell am I doing here?  
__I don't belong here  
__I don't belong here_

He pulled the bike up in front of her house, nestling by the curb, and then threw the engine down into neutral. Tara felt a little relieved; the thing _was_ loud and she knew her neighbors were probably not so pleased with the volume – and frequency – of motorcycle sounds they had been hearing over the past few days.

She stepped off onto the yellowing grass that fronted the sidewalk.

"Here," she said, handing him back his helmet. The silence stretched between them. "You should probably get back, huh?"

"Uh, yeah." He ran his fingers through his hair. "So, you busy tonight? I could give you a call…"

"Um, well…" she answered, "Not to sound like a complete dork, but I need to start studying." She jerked her head slightly in the direction of her backpack. "And I should get started on that, so…."

She watched a flicker of disappointment cross his face. Shit, it wasn't as if she didn't _want_ to talk to him tonight, and the next night, and the next. It wasn't as if she didn't _want_ to spend hours – _days, if she was being honest_ – enjoying the feel of him, getting lost in him. The attention he was giving her was completely intoxicating, but clearly, on some level, really dangerous. She had always made fun of girls who threw themselves head-first into whatever guy they were seeing, ignoring their friends, forgetting about school, basically abandoning their entire personalities. But this, right here, this between them, she sensed that it had the power – if she let it – to overwhelm her completely. She was right on the edge of it, but she wouldn't fall in, she _couldn't_.

There had to be a way she could be around him, but still not lose herself.

"Look, so, the last day of school is on Wednesday," she said. "Do you want to do something then? I don't start my job until the week after."

"Yeah, yeah…" She watched as his eyes lit up a little. "I'll try to get the afternoon off." And then he stood up off the seat of his bike and leaned over, giving her a momentary kiss on the mouth. "It's a date."

She watched him put his helmet on and drive off, the sound of the bike fading as he turned the corner and disappeared. In her mind, she knew that she needed to put one foot in front of the other, go inside the house, and start opening up her books, but in her heart, all she knew was the electric proximity of his body next to hers, the tidal force that seemed to be battering against her chest. _Oh, God, she was so screwed._


	7. Name

_**A/N: Sorry for the longer-than-normal update time...family obligations kept me occupied… I'm loving all the reading and following and favoriting and reviewing – keep it coming!**_

_And even though the moment passed me by  
__I still can't turn away  
__Cause all the dreams you never thought you'd lose  
__Got tossed along the way  
__And the letters that you never meant to send  
__Got lost or thrown away…_

There was something kind of weird about taking a shower in the middle of the afternoon. Something that just felt _off_, like seeing the inside of your school on a Saturday or having to eat dinner with your grandparents at 4:30 when it was still fully light outside.

Tara let the water rush down through her hair and tried to run her fingers through it. Still pretty stiff and thick, despite the three rounds of shampoo she had already gone through. _God, whose stupid idea had it been to have a fight with shaving cream when it was so hard to get the shit out of long hair?_ she thought, as she reached one more time for the bottle.

It had been kind of fun, though. A chance to get out all of your stress and anxiety about exams and officially start summer vacation. It was a tradition – who knows when it had started exactly – that right after the last exam, on the final day of school, all the students would scramble out to the parking lot and arm themselves with the water balloons and shaving cream cans they had been stashing behind cars and then run amok, trying to get their friends, enemies, and everyone in between. Michelle had ambushed her from behind, rubbing shaving cream into Tara's head and then running off in delighted squeals. Tara had got her back though, with a water balloon straight to the chest; Michelle had looked up in total shock and then they had both grinned at each other, before their eyes darted around the lot for potential victims or possible assailants.

And now, of course, a good twenty minutes after she had stepped into the shower, she still couldn't get her hair fully clean.

She knew she needed to hurry; Jax was going to be here to pick her up ridiculously soon.

Just thinking about him – which she had tried really hard not to do over the past six days – was bringing a tightening sensation in her stomach and even under the streaming water she could feel her face growing warm. He had given her space, only calling earlier that week to briefly check that he could come by and get her at four, and while she appreciated his restraint, part of her suspected that he had played it this way on purpose, trying to make her miss him a little, to have her think about him when he wasn't around.

And it had worked. Even as she was half-way through her Algebra exam on Monday morning, struggling through a particularly unpleasant binomial equation, she had found her mind drifting back to the way he had smiled at her when he had last dropped her off, and as she was studying for English last night, her eyes had glazed over, no longer focusing on her carefully written class notes, and had instead replayed that moment as they had kissed in the doorway of that empty room. It was a good thing she was done with exams; she didn't know if she could take one more day of feeling so distracted.

Another round of shampoo later, she was finally ready to call it quits. She just had to hope that once it was dry, her hair wouldn't look too weird.

She stepped out of the shower and dried herself off, then took a moment to messily towel-dry her wet hair. After her normal regimen of Chapstick and powder, she threw on some clothes and went back to the bathroom to quickly blow-dry her hair.

And then she heard the chime of the doorbell.

_Shit, he was early. _She looked over at the clock. _Oh, shit, she was late. _

Why she bothered looking through the blinds of the adjacent window, she didn't know, but there he was, standing out on her front porch, dirty blond hair tucked behind his ears, head tucked down a little and hands clasped behind his back in a way that, if she didn't know better, made him look kind of nervous.

She flipped the lock and opened the door. "Hey…" she said.

"Hey, Tara." He looked up, his gaze finally finding hers. "Your hair's wet," he added quickly, seeming more confused than anything else.

She reached up and absently rubbed the ends of it with her fingers. "Oh, yeah, there was the thing in the lot after school. My hair got all messed up and I didn't really get time to dry it."

"Right, the last day of school thing," he said, and she watched as he began to scuff his sneaker along the cement surface of her porch. "I wasn't allowed to go after freshman year. The Assistant Principal said I got too involved."

She tried to suppress a smile as she imagined what _involved _might have meant for him.

"So you want to come in?" she asked. "I'm almost ready."

"Uh, sure," he replied as he walked in the door and followed her into the living room. He eyed the place, but she couldn't really get a read on his reaction. She had cleaned up a bit after she had gotten home, on the off chance he might come in and see it, without really knowing why it mattered that much to her that he would see her house and walk away thinking it was totally normal, not like a place where her dad fell asleep drunk on the couch half the time and where she'd had to scrub beer stains out of the carpet.

"Yeah, let me just grab my jacket." She pulled her brown corduroy off the arm of one of the living room chairs. "So where are we going?"

"So, if it's okay with you, I was thinking maybe we could just ride out for a while, then maybe grab some food and see a movie?"

_Oh, God, it was really like a date. An actual fucking date with Jax Teller. _

"What movie?" she asked. Now that she knew he had a plan, she was incredibly curious to know what he would want to do, what he had thought _she _might want to do.

"Maybe the new _Die Hard_?" he replied hesitantly.

"I didn't see any of the other ones."

"Well, I can tell you what happened," he said, offering her a little half-smile. He reached out, putting his hand lightly on her shoulder, as they stepped towards the front door. "They weren't that complicated."

Before she could open the door, though, he stopped and turned slightly towards her. "It's okay that you'll be gone so long?"

She nodded, feeling her heart begin to race as they stood so closely together. "Yeah, I got permission to be out tonight. I told him I was just hanging out with a friend."

His eyes were full of amusement. "A friend, huh?"

"Yeah…" Her mind was empty, blissfully free of anything except the smell of him, leather and motor oil, some aftershave whose name she couldn't quite remember, but whose scent she knew she would never, ever be able to forget.

He turned his head so his face came right next to hers. "So, should we go, then… _friend_?" His voice was low and rough, and pulled at some deep part of her, a sensation she had begun to associate with the mechanical vibrations coursing through her when she sat behind him on his bike.

And then she couldn't think of anything at all.

_And now we're grown up orphans  
__And never knew their names  
__We don't belong to no one  
__That's a shame  
__But you could hide beside me  
__Maybe for a while  
__And I won't tell no one your name  
__And I won't tell 'em your name…_

It was still early, so they drove up to a little rest stop off the highway right outside Los Vaqueros. In the afternoon sun, the hills were lit up in golds and browns, scrubby green clumps of juniper dotting the landscape. Clouds curled lazily across the pale blue sky, casting shadows that shifted and transformed as they fell along the ground. The parking lot was mostly empty, occupied by just an old RV and a shiny red Subaru with a kayak tied in on the roof rack. The owners must have been out hiking; Jax knew that there were a couple of trails that started here and forked out into the watershed. He steered them over towards an area with a scattering of concrete picnic tables that had a nice view down into the valley of the reservoir.

She sat down across from him, acting a little quiet, like she didn't quite know what to say to him. The thing was, he felt kind of the same way. He wasn't scared of much, and confidence around girls had never been a problem, but he had never really been in this type of situation. He had never taken a girl out like this, picking her up at her house and taking her out to eat and then seeing a movie. He was just lucky she hadn't made him meet her dad, where they would have awkwardly shook hands and Jax would have been asked when he planned to have her back and what exactly his intentions were. _Man, fuck that_. He had only thought of the dinner-and-a-movie part because of Opie, who he had reluctantly asked for some advice after coming up with nothing on his own besides driving around for a while on his bike and hitting some fast food place if they got hungry. He didn't really know what she liked to do, and while he could have just asked her, in a way he knew it would be better if he tried to plan something out, something that she would have fun doing, without him _having _to ask her.

He had wanted so bad to call her over the past few days, to just stop by her house and see if she was there, but he had held back and only called her on Monday to confirm when he would come to get her. It had been hard, though, as he was not really accustomed to dealing with delayed gratification, especially when it came to girls. Nights had been the worst: lying in his bed, trying so hard to fall asleep, his body felt restless and overly-warm, and sleep only came after he had thrown on some clothes and gone off for a half-hour ride to clear his head. Even still, he had dreamed about her, waking up to a vague sensation of pale skin under his fingertips, her lips soft and moist against the side of his throat. And then he quickly had to deal with himself in the shower before Clay – _or, God forbid, his mom_ – saw him.

And now here she was, right in front of him.

"So, uh, how were your exams?"

"Fine," she answered, looking a little relieved that one of them had said something. "I'm glad they're done, though." She paused for a moment and looked at him with open-eyed curiosity. "Do you ever miss it?"

"Miss what?"

"I don't know, exams… well, you probably don't miss exams…. but, you know, school and everything?"

"Oh, nah, not really… It was just kind of a waste of time." Her eyebrows knitted inward, and he realized that maybe she thought he was insulting her. "I mean, it's a waste for someone like me. Not like you. You're actually good at it. You'll end up being something." And it was true. He barely knew her, but he knew she would end up doing whatever she put her mind to, maybe being a goddamn doctor if that's what she wanted. He was _proud_ of it, too, knowing someone like that.

She smiled momentarily, but then it faded.

"You could be something, you know. You could get out of this town, do something else."

"Nah, why would I want to get outta here?" He grinned like it was a joke, but she seemed to be taking him seriously.

"Don't you ever want more than this, Jax?"

The way she asked him the question, he knew she wanted him to say yes. But the truth was, he didn't. He liked this small town where everyone knew each other, where it was just him and his bike and the MC. He would put in his time at the garage, learning the ropes, and eventually he would run the whole thing, the business and the club, and he would find an old lady and have a couple kids and give the whole thing to them just like he had gotten it from his dad.

"Not really," he said, shaking his head.

She nodded slightly, her gaze shifting off to the view beyond him. For a moment, he envisioned himself ten, twenty years from now, fully patched, running the club, coming home from the garage to find her in her hospital outfit – scrubs, or whatever the hell they were called – and then sitting around a dinner table with two kids as they all talked about their day. Her with a SAMCRO tattoo written somewhere on her body, maybe his name, too. Her in tight leather, knocking back beers at the clubhouse on a Sunday afternoon, holding court as the brand-new first old lady. And then he wiped the vision from his mind. In ten or twenty years, she would be long gone, not sticking around here for anything, not even for him.

But there was no point in thinking about that. For now, at least, he was going to enjoy hanging out with her, listening to her talk, laughing at her jokes – _and fuck him if she wasn't pretty funny _– and watching her figure out that she really liked him kissing her. It was fairly obvious to Jax that she hadn't ever really been with a guy, especially considering how embarrassed she had been to tell him about what had happened to her at school last week, but she had this kind of sweet enthusiasm about her, something that told him that it would be worth it to wait and watch without pushing her too much.

She was looking over at him again. Her hair was mostly dry by now, shining against the sunlight.

"So how's work been? How's Chibs?" Her mouth curled upwards slightly and Jax resisted the urge to climb over the table so he could kiss her right then and there. Instead, he just smiled back.

"Work's good. Chibs is good… Should I tell him you asked about him?"

"Definitely…" Her eyes glanced down as she bit down on her bottom lip. "I mean, we totally had a connection…"

He snorted as he laughed a little. "A connection, huh? Well… I guess I can pass that on…"

He had been telling her the truth; everything really had been going good at work. Chibs was talking to him again, and had let Jax switch shifts so he could be free this afternoon, although in return he had squeezed out of him a promise to work open to close on Friday _and_ Saturday. And he definitely wasn't going to share this with Tara, but Clay had even let him shadow Piney on a protection run up to Sacramento, trailing a truck full of camcorders and portable CD players. Before he left the house, his step-father had slapped a Glock into his palm, without even a word. But the whole thing had gone perfectly, with nothing to report, and Jax was both a little relieved and a little disappointed to hand the gun back.

It had gotten quiet again. He waited for a moment; there was something he had been wanting to talk to her about, ever since last week, when they were standing in front of his dad's bike at the clubhouse, but he wanted to do it carefully and not mess it up.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Uh, sure."

"What's it like with just you and your dad, without your mom being there?"

Her face fell a little, her cheeks paling. She clearly hadn't expected him to ask her that.

"It's just…" He needed to explain himself. _But, shit, he didn't want to upset her_. "It's just that my mom, after my dad… after he was gone, she got remarried and then we moved in with Clay, and I just wanted to know what it was like, with just the two of you..."

She didn't say anything, and he could have kicked himself for fucking the whole thing up.

_And scars are souvenirs you never lose  
__The past is never far  
__Did you lose yourself somewhere out there?  
__Did you get to be a star?  
__And don't it make you mad to learn that life  
__Is more than who we are…_

As he was speaking, a million thoughts flew threw her mind, none of which she could actually say aloud. She could never tell him what it was really like, not about her hurt and fear and disappointment and anger – _so much anger_ – all stemming from the fact that the one person who could have helped her, comforted her, was so wrapped up in his own pain that he had basically left her to raise herself. She could never tell him about the walls she had built up, the structure of her hours and the preservation of her own small cultivated space, that allowed her to get through each day without shutting down. She could never tell him about the hole in her heart, the one she tried to fill with classes and studying and planning a future in some unknown place that would have no memories of _her_.

But he was looking at her, his face marked with something that looked like concern, and she realized that he might be able to understand what she felt, without her really having to explain it. She looked back at him, seeing past the leather and the long hair, past the cocky grin he presented to the world, and she saw something she recognized.

"It's hard," she replied. "I miss her a lot." She wished she had the words to say it better. "I know my dad does, too. But I guess it'd be different if he married someone else. Maybe he wouldn't miss her so much."

He nodded a little, as his eyes glanced down towards the concrete tabletop.

"I don't really know if my mom misses my dad," he said. "She doesn't really talk about him like that…" His thumb began to brush against the rough surface. She waited, listening to the sound of her own breathing. "Does it get easier?"

"I don't know," she replied softly. "I miss her for different reasons now."

"Like what?"

And it was like a flood washing over her, and she had no idea how to stop it. There were just so many thoughts and feelings and they were welling up, overflowing, twisting into words that spilled out of her mouth in a wild rush.

"It's just… it's like you want to talk to them about things, but they aren't there, and you have to keep it inside, and a part of you… a part of you just dies. And every time you forget what happened and then remember, you die again."

She couldn't believe she was talking like this to him. But maybe he would understand. _God, he might be the only one to really understand_. He was looking at her, and she saw him, and she knew that he saw her, too. He smiled a little, just enough that it reached his eyes.

"What would you talk to her about?"

"I don't know… my life, school." She knew it sounded stupid, that it made her world seem so small. But he smiled a bit more at her, and she felt her heart begin to ache fiercely deep within her chest.

"Would you tell her about me?"

She couldn't help it; she smiled back.

"I don't know… maybe… yeah."

For a moment, they just sat there, smiling and staring at each other, until it was too much, and she had to look away. She stared out into the distance, blinking her eyes against the harsh reflection of the sun in the lapping water of the reservoir.

"What happened to her?" he asked.

Little pieces flashed into her mind. The industrial vinyl cover of the chair in the hospital room, sticky against the back of her thighs. The sound of her throwing up in the bathroom at home, audible through the crack beneath the door. The feel of the worn cotton nightgown against Tara's cheek as she pressed her tiny body against the warmth of her mom's sleeping form. The strange quiet as her breathing slowed and then stopped, followed by the strangled sobs of her father.

"She got cancer. By the time they figured it out, it was too late."

"Is that why you wanted to become a doctor?"

She nodded, then looked over at him again.

"When she was in the hospital, and I would come visit, she used to take me with her to the maternity ward. She just liked being there, I think… And the doctors and the nurses, they seemed happy, too, taking care of the babies, handing them over to their parents…"

She had never told anyone about that, not even her dad. How was it possible she was sitting here, at a rest stop picnic table, telling him these things, things she had tried so hard to keep so close?

_We grew up way too fast  
__And now there's nothing to believe  
__And reruns all become our history  
__A tired song keeps playing on a tired radio  
__And I won't tell no one your name  
__And I won't tell 'em your name  
__I won't tell 'em your name  
__Oh oh oh  
__I won't tell 'em your name  
__Oh…_

Even after listening to her, he still didn't really understand why she would want to be anywhere near a hospital after going through what she had with her mom. Just thinking about the place set him off into a cold sweat, even in the warmth of the afternoon.

The room had always been full of people, men in cuts coming and going, talking in hushed tones, giving their condolences to his mom. The SAMCRO brothers had taken shifts, never leaving the two of them alone, while men from all over California, from Arizona and Nevada, had filtered in to pay their respects. Machines beeped and the ventilator hissed and Jax could only sit in the shitty upholstered chair and stare out at nothing. Clay had wandered over and put a hand on his shoulder, but Jax had thrown it off and stormed out, not stopping until he reached the parking lot. He had come back eventually, though.

The doctors kept saying things like _massive trauma_ and _intracranial bleeding_ and he had stopped listening after a while.

His mom hadn't cried. Neither had he. Eventually his dad's body, all bruised and bloody and broken, had shut down, and Jax finally got to leave, finally got to be alone. And everything was empty, and there was no one he could tell.

So when she had said all those things, about wanting to talk to her mom, about a part of her dying, he had instantly understood. It was like finally finding someone who spoke a language only you knew, a tiny recognition and a swell of relief.

"Yeah, I don't really like hospitals," he said.

"Right… because of your dad," she replied, nodding.

"Well, yeah, and my brother, too."

_Shit, why was he talking about Tommy?_ He didn't ever really talk about Tommy, not to his mom, not to Opie, not to anyone. If his dad was a wound that was slowly and tenderly scabbing over, his brother was a jagged scar, buried deep and dark where he didn't have to look at it.

"I didn't know you have a brother…" she said, a little surprised.

"Yeah…" he said quietly. "Well, I had a brother… He died when I was eleven."

Her eyes opened wide. "Oh, God… I'm so sorry."

"Yeah."

He bit his lips together and stared off at the rolling hills beyond them. He couldn't do this anymore; there wasn't anything left to say, anything he _could_ say. She somehow seemed to understand, and he watched as she drew up one of her knees above the edge of the table, her arm wrapping casually around her folded leg. He could sense that with her shifting she was trying to pull the conversation back to something easier. After a moment, she finally spoke.

"So when did you get that?" She nodded towards the tattoo on his forearm.

"Six months ago," he replied. "The anniversary."

He had been underage, and a little drunk. Any reputable artist would have refused him point-blank, but the brothers had a guy who did all their work, and after a phone call to Clay, he had motioned for Jax to take a seat in the chair and started to pull out all his equipment.

"Did it hurt?"

"I mean…" He shrugged his shoulders, dismissing the question of pain. And then he dropped his gaze down, and smiled a little. "Yeah," he admitted, "like a bitch." He glanced up at her. "You ever think of getting a tattoo?"

"No," she answered, a teasing note in her voice. "'Cause, apparently, it hurts like a bitch…" She paused. "I mean, what would I get a tattoo of, anyway?"

"I don't know, maybe some flowers or something?"

"Seriously?" she asked, eyeing him skeptically. Her lip was curling up, offering the promise of a smile.

An electronic trill suddenly pierced through the quiet. At first he had no idea what the sound was, but then he remembered. _Oh, shit_. He turned behind him and pulled the pager out of his back pocket. _38 911_. The first number was the code for the clubhouse and the second meant that he needed to get his ass down there, quick.

"Shit, uh…" he stammered. "We gotta go… I mean, I gotta go." He shoved the pager back in his pocket and swiveled his leg over the bench seat so he could stand up.

"Aren't we going to get food?" she asked, looking completely confused.

"Yeah, I can't… I gotta go to the club." _Fuck, it was at least thirty minutes back to town. And another ten to drop her off and get over there. Forty fucking minutes. Clay was going to have his ass. _

He stood and took a few steps so he was standing at the edge of the picnic table. She wasn't moving; she didn't even look like she had plans to move any time soon.

"Can't we just go eat after you're done?"

_Fuck, she wasn't getting it._ He rubbed his hand over his face.

"No…" he said, instantly realizing how harsh he was sounding. He tried to soften his tone. "Look, I don't know what they're gonna need or how long it's gonna be for. But we gotta go right now. I can drop you off at home real quick."

Her head tilted up towards him, a sharpness appearing in her eyes. "I don't understand. You just get a page and you have to go?"

"Look…" he said, "this is just how things are with me and the club. Sometimes they just need me." He didn't know how else to explain it to her, to get her to see that he had responsibilities that he couldn't blow off.

"And you've got to drop everything?"

"Yeah."

Why didn't she understand that this was hard for him, too, that he would have preferred to stay out here with her, talking to her like this? He had talked and she had listened to him, and for once Jax had felt like it was all okay, everything that he felt, everything he had kept inside. Even the things he couldn't say, he knew she would be able to understand.

But sometimes you had to do hard things, you had to put aside what you wanted. _Fuck, there were brothers who went to prison for the club, who took bullets. How could he complain about a stupid fucking page?_

"Okay, let's go," she said quickly, putting her palms down on the table and rising to her feet. She didn't look at him as she turned and started pacing towards the parking lot. He could tell she was pissed. And he had no idea what the fuck to do about it.

_I think about you all the time  
__But I don't need the same  
__It's lonely where you are  
__Come back down  
__And I won't tell 'em your name_

She knew she was being stupid. She knew she was being pouty and passive-aggressive, and all those things she couldn't stand when it was other girls acting that way. But she couldn't help it.

A part of her was gutted with disappointment. She had been looking forward to today for a while, not really knowing what might happen when they were by themselves again, but all day she had felt herself humming with heady anticipation. And now it was gone, and there wasn't anything for her to enjoy at home, much less actually look forward to.

A smaller part of her was still recoiling, stung by how fast he had switched from a sympathetic ear to a dismissive jackass. One call from his _club_ and he had come running. She sighed, knowing she was being unfair; he probably had a good reason for having to go, but, still… She had let her guard down, opened the door a tiny crack, and they had had this moment, one she could never have possibly predicted. But maybe this was what he did when things got serious, maybe she _was_ stupid for having thought that she could trust him with this and that he would understand. How could she even know where she stood with him? If he really liked her, wouldn't he have tried to find a way to do whatever he needed to do without cancelling on her? How much could she really matter to him, after all?

As they drove into town, Tara continued to wind herself into a state of misery. By the time they reached her neighborhood, all she wanted in the world was to be off the back of his bike.

Even before he had come to a complete stop in front of her house, she had ripped off the helmet, and she threw it back towards him as she unceremoniously stepped off his bike and started towards her house. She didn't even look back. _God, she was being an idiot, but fuck if she would let him see her like this. _The bike's engine died and she heard the kickstand scrape into place.

And then he was in front of her, blocking her way, putting his hands up as if to keep her from going.

"Tara, wait, _wait_…" There was an edge in his voice she didn't really recognize. She stopped, but didn't look up at him. Instead, her eyes focused on the tiny fraying edge of his shirt collar, the fabric dimpling from wear. "Look, I'm sorry…" he continued. "I didn't mean for today to end like this."

She nodded a little in acknowledgement, or maybe just resignation, but she still didn't meet his gaze.

"I'll call you later tonight, okay?"

She finally looked up. Furrowed lines were marking his forehead. "Why?" she asked.

She knew it sounded harsh, emotional, nothing like the cool and effortless girl she always wanted to be around him.

And then his eyes took her in, his head canted slightly to the side, looking at her like he had when she was talking about her mom, his curve of his small smile etched into her memory.

"'Cause I like talking to you," he replied. One of his hands curled itself against her waist, warm even through her shirt. "'Cause… look, I like you, and I think you like me, too."

Her heart was in her throat as he leaned closer towards her, before she even had a chance to anticipate it, and his lips met hers briefly, fully, and to her surprise she responded, moving against him without even thinking. He pulled back, but not too far, close enough that he still seemed to fill her entire field of vision.

"And 'cause I wanna take you to see that _Die Hard_ movie." He grinned, and she was on fire. "Okay?"

She nodded again. What else could she do?

"I gotta go." He softly squeezed her waist. "But I'll talk to you later."

And then he stepped away, taking with him the warm heaviness of his hand on her. And again she was left alone, left standing on her front lawn, not understanding anything at all. Just as it was ever since he had strolled into her life, she was the same, but everything else was completely, astonishingly, maddeningly different.


	8. Better Man

_**A/N: So Netflix just put up Season 7 and I cannot tell you how hard it was to watch that last part of the finale again. Writing these two characters, I sometimes forget what's going to happen to them (not just at the end, but through the whole series), so I like to think of this fic as my happy place where the worst thing that can happen is teenage angst. So, onward!**_

June 1995

_Waiting, watching the clock, it's four o'clock, it's got to stop  
__Tell him, take no more, she practices her speech  
__As he opens the door, she rolls over  
__Pretends to sleep as he looks her over…_

Four-thirty in the afternoon and the place was as dead as roadkill. Tara sighed and leaned her forearms against the counter. After five minutes of staring out at a room of empty booths and scattered tables, deserted except for a guy in the corner who'd been reading a newspaper for the past three hours without buying more than a fountain soda, she gave up and pulled a dog-eared paperback out of her pocket.

"…_my feeling that everything was dead. With the coming of Dean Moriarty began the part of my life you could call my life on the road. Before that I'd often dreamed of going West to see the country, always vaguely planning and never taking off…"_

Her eyes had trouble focusing on the lines of text, and she found herself glancing up at the windows, listening for the tell-tale sound, waiting for him to walk through the door. He had said he would come by at the end of her shift and pick her up, although she didn't really know what they would end up doing. Activities tended to be vaguely defined with Jax, which was how he seemed to like it, and which she'd come to realize was how she liked it, too. More often than not, they'd just drive around on his bike, stop if they got tired, grab something to eat when they got hungry, and head back to town before he got too low on gas. It was just so great to be out of her house, to be free from all that claustrophobic bullshit for just a few more hours each day. She still hadn't told her dad about him, and if he asked where she was going, she just told him she was working extra hours or had to cover someone else's shift.

As summer jobs went, though, this one was pretty good. The responsibilities were minimal, and while it could get crowded on weekend nights, the tips were good, and the owner, Ray, only charged them half-price on food. Not that she wanted to eat pizza all the time – after nearly four weeks she was getting a little tired of the way that the smell of it seemed to linger in her clothes despite repeated washes – but it wasn't half-bad, especially after a long shift on her feet. Thank God they didn't have table service, just a menu on the wall and a tip jar by the register, and the array of big-screen televisions showing A's and Giants games kept the customers in the seats and buying more beer.

She looked over at the clock above the phone. Four-forty five. _Shit, he needed to show up soon and keep her from dying of boredom. _

He had ended up calling her that night after their cancelled date, and because he was scheduled to work the next few days, they had made plans to go out to see the movie on Sunday. But when he had picked her up in front of the library – that was where she told her dad she was going for the afternoon – the first thing she had noticed was the bandage wrapped around his left arm, half-visible under the edge of his sleeve. At first, he had said that it was from an accident at the garage, but gave her a vague mumble when she asked him for details, and then just as quickly changed the subject. On the way to the movie theater, it had actually started bleeding a little, the gauze spotted with seeps of red. He had stalked off, keeping his back to her, even though she could see him untying and retying the gauze so that the bloodstain was no longer visible.

She couldn't really understand why he was acting so strange about it. Accidents probably happened all the time at the garage; there was nothing to get self-conscious about. And it wasn't as if they hadn't told each other all sorts of other things, much more personal shit. One night, leaning up against his bike, she had started telling him more about her mom, what she had been like when Tara was little and what had happened when she died. Jax had ended up talking about his dad, and what it was like living with his mom and step-father, how he never quite felt at home in their house. It was clear he loved his mom – a woman Tara had only glimpsed in passing in the grocery store, her shirt cut low and her hair sprayed up high – although she sounded like a real piece of work. _But, shit, what did she know? She hadn't had to bury a husband and a son, and who knows what the hell that did to you._

Tara closed the book and stuffed it back in her pocket. She half-heartedly wondered what they would end up doing tonight. It was hard to be _too_ excited: tonight was the Pearl Jam show in Sacramento and she had hadn't been able to get tickets despite her repeated efforts. It didn't help that they were hands down her favorite band, that she had bought the new album the day it came out last December and had listened to it nearly nonstop until it started to skip and she had to buy a new copy. It just would have been so fucking awesome to be there, to hear them play all the songs she knew by heart.

The faint sound of a motorcycle engine brought her to full attention. She looked out to see him – _no, make that them_ – pull into the empty parking spaces at the far end of the lot. Even with the helmet, she could tell the figure on the second bike was Opie, and she tried to think of any reason why he might have come along.

The two made their way inside, not even bothering with the pretense of ordering anything, and instead made themselves comfortable in a booth by the windows. No one was around – no one besides them had even driven into the lot in the last half-hour – so Tara abandoned her spot behind the counter and walked over to the booth, sliding in beside Jax.

"This place is packed," Opie said dryly. "Are you really being paid right now?"

"Yeah, for the next…" – she looked over at the clock again – "…five minutes." She glanced over at Jax. He seemed a little quiet, his face expressionless. "What have you all been up to?"

"Just finishing up at the garage," he replied. "Chibs had me do a last-minute oil change, or we woulda been here sooner."

"Well, I need to go punch out and grab my stuff, so give me a minute, okay?" she said.

She started to move out of the booth, but he nudged her before she got very far.

"Wait a sec…" he said. She sat back down and looked over at him. "I thought maybe we could talk about our plans tonight…."

"Did you have something in mind?" she asked. It felt weird to be doing this in front of Opie, like he wasn't there. She glanced across the table and realized that he wasn't even looking at them, but instead gazing at the open kitchen area in front of the oven. No one was over there, except that new girl, whose name she couldn't quite remember. Dana? Donna?

"Well…" Jax continued, and she looked back at him. "If you didn't have any ideas, I thought we might drive up north a bit, maybe find some way to use these…" He reached into his back pocket to grab something and then slid it over to her across the table. It was two tickets. Pearl Jam tickets. For tonight.

"Holy shit, Jax!" she exclaimed. "How did you get these? They were sold out after two minutes…"

He grinned sheepishly. "One of the brothers, he's got friends who work security at the Cal Expo."

Without taking her eyes off the tickets, she threw her arms around him, her chin resting against his shoulder. She couldn't believe it. Over the past couple of weeks, she had been complaining about the fact that she hadn't been able to get tickets, but she had no idea he'd actually been listening, that he'd actually try to get them for her. And he had clearly been hoping to surprise her.

"Thank you," she said quietly.

"Yeah…." he said, half-mumbling against her hair. "Do you need to run home and grab anything?"

_Home? Shit, she wanted to be on the road right now. _Her legs bounced up and down a little bit, like she could barely even contain herself.

"I'm good. Let's just go…"

They both started to slide out of the booth, Jax's wallet chain knocking against the varnished wood, and noticed when Opie hadn't gotten up with them.

"What's up, Ope, you coming?" Jax asked.

"I'm kinda hungry, man," Opie replied, not quite looking up to meet their eyes. "I think I may stay, order some food."

Jax nodded, and unclasped his sunglasses from where he had hooked them into the collar of his t-shirt. "Catch you later, then," he said, and then looked over at Tara. "You need to punch out?"

"Yeah, yeah," she replied. "I'll be right back." As she walked away, Tara took one last look at Opie, wearing his cut and black toque, and then swiveled her gaze over towards the kitchen, towards the petite girl who was attempting – and failing – to throw pizza crusts without making any holes.

"You need to turn your wrist more," Tara said to the girl as she walked by. The girl looked up at her quickly, her eyes wide, a smudge of flour tracing across her right cheekbone.

_She lies and says she's in love with him, can't find a better man  
__She dreams in color, she dreams in red, can't find a better man  
__Can't find a better man  
__Can't find a better man  
__Oh…_

Jax watched in amusement as Tara tore into the greasy paper carton that had just been deposited on their table on a red plastic tray. It was just these little things about her that he liked learning. For one thing, the girl fucking _loved_ tater tots. She'd eat them with ketchup, or mayo, but she really liked them with mustard. Before the drive-in server had brought over their food, she had assembled a row of tiny plastic cups full of mustard, just so she would have enough to dunk each of her tater tots. He smiled a little bit to himself as he reached for his double cheeseburger.

A small slice of pain shot through his outstretched arm, but he tried not to let it show on his face. He didn't look over at her as he unwrapped his food and started eating. Maybe she hadn't noticed.

The arm was annoying as hell, but eventually it would fully heal, and then he could just forget about the whole thing. He still felt pretty shitty for lying to her about how he had gotten hurt, but there wasn't really any other option. If he ever told her what had really happened, she would just freak out. Probably dump his ass.

The afternoon he had cancelled on her, he had dropped her off and hightailed it straight to the club. The brothers were still meeting, so no one noticed that he had showed up a little late, but it was clear from the number of bikes in the lot and the quiet, hushed tones of the other prospects that something serious was going on. Once the brothers had started pouring out of the chapel, Clay had caught Jax's eye and pulled him aside. It turned out that SAMCRO had finally gotten a chance to make a major sale with this gang from Oakland, the One-Niners, and the exchange had been set up for Saturday night. Clay had wanted his help with getting everything packed up – a couple crates of M16s and some MAC-10s thrown in for good measure – and ready to go in time for the hand-off.

On Saturday, he had gone in the van with Chibs and Piney, Bobby riding alongside, Tig and Clay on point. Sitting in the back, with no windows, all Jax could do was stare at the crates, and think about all the various ways that this could get fucked up. Clay's Glock had bitten into his lower back where it was tucked into the waistband of his jeans.

It had been nearly sunset by the time they reached the meeting point, some place off the 880 in West Oakland. He had put on his best don't-fuck-with-me face as he jumped out of the back and then watched as a couple of guys from the Niners' crew had unloaded the crates from the van and put them in the back of a U-Haul. Clay had gone up to talk to a huge guy sporting a diamond earring and a Tommy Hilfiger jersey. An overstuffed envelope was being passed between the two men when he heard the first shot, and then it had seemed like they were coming from everywhere.

Time had passed so slow, and so fast. He had ducked beside the van, and there was yelling and more shots and then it was quiet. Jax had been dazed for a minute, the whiff of metallic smoke burning in his nostrils, until Chibs grabbed him by the arm and he realized that it hurt like hell. It was just a graze, not very deep, but Clay had been fucking pissed and all the Tommy Hilfiger guy could say was that it had to have been a rival gang, trying to stop the sale and take off with the merchandise. Eventually, he had handed Clay an extra five grand.

No, she definitely did _not_ need to know what had happened.

"You done?" he asked. "You want anything else?"

She shook her head and grinned a little as she surveyed the crumpled-up paper wrapper and napkins in front of her. The carton of tater tots was empty. "I'm good," she replied. "Thanks, though."

He could feel her foot shaking against the table leg, and her eyes were lit up, darting around like a bird. _God, she looked so excited. And it was partly because of him. _

It hadn't been that hard to get the tickets, and he had known he was going to try to get them the minute she had mentioned the concert. He had kind of been hoping to scrounge up some backstage passes, but he hadn't been that lucky.

She glanced over towards him, catching him looking at her, the tiny smile still playing on her lips.

"What?" she asked, all innocence.

"Nothin'," he replied, the edge of his mouth curling unconsciously upwards. His eyes momentarily glanced down towards her bag lying next to her on the seat. It was half-open, the creased edges of a book just barely peeking out. That was interesting, too; she always seemed to be carrying something to read, as if anticipating some moment of quiet and solitude wherever she went. "What're you reading?" he asked, jutting his chin towards her bag.

She looked over at it quickly. "Oh…" she said. "Uh, it's Kerouac."

He nodded as if he knew who that was. "Any good?"

"I'm only on the first chapter... But I can write you up a book report later," she replied playfully.

"_By Tara Knowles, Age 16_…" he intoned, in a sing-song. He liked teasing her. Mostly because she knew how to deal with it, and, even better, how to dish it back. With other girls, he could tell that it just scared them, that they couldn't tell if he was being serious or not, probably another reason why they hadn't done a lot of talking.

"And it'll get a gold star, and I can tape it up on my fridge…" She grinned at him.

It hit him straight in the gut. _Damn, she was so different. _And until she had come along, he hadn't known that difference, hadn't realized what he had been missing.

He still didn't really understand it. But he hadn't been with any other girls since he met her – and it wasn't like there hadn't been offers. All of them, even the girls he had happily spent hours with, doing all sorts of things, they just seemed so _boring_. Looking back at it now, at all the stuff he had done before her, it was kind of sad. And it wasn't like Tara had asked him not to mess around – _fuck, they hadn't even talked about what was going on between them _– but he realized that he didn't really want to do anything with anyone else. Because he loved it, loved riding around with her in the dark, kissing and touching her under the night sky, sitting across from her in crappy drive-in restaurants and talking to her and watching her inhale fried food.

He cleared his throat. "So, uh… should we go?"

"Yeah." She started piling up all their trash on the tray, but then turned her gaze over towards him. "You're not going to get paged, right? They wouldn't page you tonight…" He noticed that her foot had stopped shaking, that she was completely still.

"Nah, not likely. Clay's not even in town, so…" He shrugged his shoulders a little.

"Where'd he go?" she asked.

"Took my mom up to Tahoe for the weekend. It's his birthday." Jax knew the trip wasn't all for fun, though. Clay had mentioned that he planned to drop in on Indian Hills, see if Uncle Jury had a line on any possible SAMCRO recruits.

"Oh..." she said. "And they left you by yourself?" He almost laughed. Jax had been left to take care of himself since he was ten. It had gotten even worse after Tommy died.

He tucked a piece of hair back behind his ear. "Guess they figured I probably wouldn't burn the house down."

"Well…" she said, smiling a little. "The night's not over yet." Her eyes were bright in the harsh outdoor florescents, and he could feel all the blood rushing quickly away from his head.

_Talking to herself, there's no one else who needs to know  
__She tells herself, oh  
__Memories back when she was bold and strong  
__And waiting for the world to come along  
__Swears she knew it, now she swears he's gone…_

The whole thing was amazing, so much better than she could possibly have imagined.

The crowd was huge and as they had started playing, everyone had swayed back and forth in the early evening air. Night began to fall, and as the songs had changed, the tempo and the volume rising, people had jumped up and down, hurling themselves upwards into strangers' hands as they crowd-surfed. They were playing everything: songs from the first and second albums, new songs, even a Pink Floyd cover that sounded even cooler than the original. Tara had jumped and swayed and threw her hands up and sung along with everyone else, screaming out every time a song ended. She couldn't believe she was actually there, watching them play, experiencing this with thousands of other people.

And he was right there, with her.

At some point, she realized that he was standing behind her, his arms wrapped around her waist, his head against hers.

There had been a song she had been waiting for them to play, off the new album, but they had done so many songs already, and she her heart sank a little to think that they might not ever get to it. And then, after they had finished a song, the band left the stage and all the lights had gone out, leaving everyone in pitch darkness. The crowd kept cheering, though, collectively trying to summon the band back from wherever they had gone, and after a few minutes of standing in the dark, Tara had cheered, too. Finally, the band had walked back on, to cries and raucous approval, and then from the unlit stage, she could hear the opening chord of her song.

The stage slowly began to light up as they moved into the chorus, and she was smiling, and everything was so perfect. Her lips were forming the words of the song, and she softly closed her eyes, listening to the music, to the thousands of people around her, feeling him against her, encircling her, and she wanted to remember this moment forever. When she was old and wrinkled and looking back at her whole life, she wanted to be able to remember what it was like to be right here, to be this happy.

She turned a little in his arms, angling her face back towards him. The stage lights were stark against the planes of his face, his eyes cast in shadow. She wanted him to know, to understand what she felt, but she didn't know how to say it, not with words. So she gently pressed her lips to his, searching and finding him again and again, as his arms tightened around her, quick with his reply.

She could feel her own heart beating, and then she felt his, too.

As the song ended, she tucked her head against him, finding that hollow where his neck and shoulder met. Her arms wrapped around him and he pulled her in close. She didn't want to think about the fact that eventually she would have to let go, that soon enough the band would stop playing and all the lights would come on and they would have to leave and she would have to go back home and be by herself in her tiny room.

The final song – slow, heavy with guitar – played and the whole crowd was rocking back and forth, tiny flames from lighters punctuating the darkness, and then it was all over.

He let her stay there in his arms for a little while, as people around them made their way towards the exits. But then he gave her a little squeeze and tilted his head as he looked down at her.

"You ready?" he asked.

She nodded as she released her arms. "Yeah." Once he let go, she took a step back from him, but he found her again as they started to move towards the exit, catching her hand and lacing his fingers through hers.

"That was so awesome," she said, glancing over at him. "Thank you… again."

He smiled and nodded, mumbling something she couldn't quite hear, not with the post-concert music playing over the loudspeakers and the conversations of random passers-by all around her.

They were quiet as they walked back to his bike, which Tara didn't mind at all. She was still caught up in the lingering memories of the music and the darkness and the feeling of being weightless but still safe and surrounded by him. He had parked kind of far away, so by the time they got there, she had already made her mind up.

He passed her his helmet – for a moment she wondered what had ever happened to that ticket he had gotten, whether he had ended up paying it – and she held it in her hands, running her fingers against the curved edge. There was a scratch on one side and she couldn't remember having noticed it before.

"So, um, I was thinking…" She could hear him turn towards her, but she didn't look up at him. "Maybe you don't drop me off at home…"

"What'd you want to do?" he asked.

"Maybe we could go hang out at your house…?" She didn't mean for it to sound so tentative, but she knew that her face was growing warm, that she could barely get the words out anyway. Because she knew they weren't just words. Everyone knew that words like that meant something _more_.

It wasn't as if they hadn't been alone together. Nearly all the time they had spent together had been by themselves. They had been alone on dirt paths in the middle of nowhere, on the bleachers of the deserted high school football field, in her room on a quiet afternoon, the sunlight blazing against the bare skin of his chest. She had laid against him, knowing, feeling, how much he wanted her. And she had kissed him, his hands tracing over her, and she had struggled to put a name to the sensations he was causing in her, before she finally let herself drown in it. But she knew that in all that time, he was somehow waiting for her, incredibly patiently, but waiting still the same. And in a way, it was as if she was waiting for herself, too. She wanted to trust him, to feel like he wouldn't turn on her after it was over, but it was hard, knowing his reputation, knowing her own fears and insecurities. When he smiled at her, it was like getting a prize that she would eventually have to give back, after someone told her it was all a big mistake.

But she had never really felt this close to another person, not since her mom. Sometimes they didn't even have to talk at all; they just sat in the quiet and breathed the same air and everything was so calm and easy. _Was that enough? Enough to tell herself that she could trust him?_

_She lies and says she's in love with him, can't find a better man  
__She dreams in color, she dreams in red, can't find a better man  
__She lies and says she still loves him, can't find a better man  
__She dreams in color, she dreams in red, can't find a better man  
__Can't find a better man  
__Can't find a better man  
__Yeah…_

The hour-long drive back to his house was pure torture. When he took a turn, her knees squeezed tighter around his hips, and her warm hands migrated from his waist to the middle of his torso as she held on, each jolt of the bike causing a momentary short-circuit of his brain. _A couple inches lower and… fuck. _He just tried to breathe and prayed to God she didn't actually move her hands any lower, not if they didn't want to end up crashing on the side of the highway.

He hadn't told her about his house being empty on purpose – it had been just an off-hand comment – but it actually was pretty clever, when he thought about it. She could have chosen to ignore what he had said, pretend like it was nothing. It was like he was just showing her an open door, and it was up to her whether she wanted to walk through it. But if she had just wanted him to take her home tonight, it wouldn't have bothered him that much; she had clearly had a great time at the concert, and that had been more than enough. When she had kissed him, in the middle of the encore, she had just looked so fucking happy, happier than he'd ever seen her. And it made him happy, too, to know that he had given her that. There would be other nights, other days when they didn't have to work and her dad wasn't home. California summers were long, and they had time.

But she hadn't ignored it. She had decided she wanted to walk through the door, whatever that might mean to her. He was a little surprised, but like hell he was going to tell her no.

They pulled into his driveway and he cut the engine, darkness flooding over them. He felt her body roughly brush against his as she stepped off the bike, and it took all he had not to back her up against the garage door.

Instead, he raked his fingers through his hair and walked with her up to the front door, unlocking it and throwing on the lights as he went inside. Her eyes blinked a couple of times as she adjusted to the brightness and he watched as she took everything in. There wasn't that much to see, just a big living room with black leather couches and a TV in the corner, and a dining room off to the right with the long table from his old house that his mom had insisted they keep, just so she could have her big dinners with all the brothers and their families.

"So, uh… this is Clay's house."

She nodded, but didn't say anything, so he took her back towards the kitchen. She leaned against the counter and he went to the fridge and opened it up, peering inside, not because he wanted anything but because he didn't know what the fuck else to do.

"You hungry?" he asked, hoping to give some reason for why he was standing there. "You want something to eat?"

"No, I'm good," she replied. She was glancing all around, looking at his mom's collection of cookbooks on the counter, at the Teller-Morrow calendar stuck up on the wall with a push-pin, a picture of a 1995 Triumph Daytona 900 gracing the month of June.

"We could watch TV or something…" he offered, shutting the door to the fridge.

And then she looked right at him, with the same level of curiosity she had given the contents of the kitchen, only with a little more intent written into her face.

"Why don't you show me your room?"

If he was surprised by her directness, he tried not to show it. "Uh, sure…" he said, turning towards the doorway, watching as she pressed slightly back against the counter and then made her way over to where he was. The back hallway was unlit and pretty narrow, so they had to squeeze together to walk side-by-side, and Jax could smell the faint trace of cigarette smoke in her hair, which she must have picked up at the concert. He didn't mind; smoke itself never bothered him much and it seemed to give her a vaguely rebellious, unfamiliar quality.

As he reached his doorway, he pulled his keys out of his pocket and moved to unlock the door. Once it was open, he threw his hand inside and switched the lights on, only to look back and see her staring at the key in his hand.

"You lock your bedroom?" she asked.

"What, you think that's weird?" Maybe it was. All he knew was that there were things in his life he wanted to stay his, and his single demand when they moved into this house was a room with a lock on the door.

"No, I just can't believe I never thought of it," she said, half-smiling.

She walked into the room, looking around, and Jax would have sworn that her movements seemed a little more hesitant than before. She peered at his bookshelf, which didn't actually hold any books, just some Little League trophies and a weathered baseball mitt and on a lower shelf, a boom box and a few scattered CDs. She dropped her bag on the floor and then leaned down so she could thumb over the CDs.

"Wouldn't have pegged you as a Weezer fan," she said, picking up the case.

He shrugged. "I liked that sweater song." And then he smiled at her, even though she was still looking at the CD. "But don't tell Opie. He thinks I'm just into Metallica and all that shit."

She put the case back and wandered over to the other side of the room, tracing her hand against the back of the desk chair, glancing up at the old picture of Jax and his dad that was tacked to the wall. He barely caught the tiny dart of her head as she snuck a glimpse of his bed and then looked away. Something was off, he knew, but he was wary about approaching her for fear of making it worse. Her arms crossed up over her chest and then she just seemed to stand there for a minute, staring absently out his window, her only movement a slight rise and fall of her chest as she breathed a little more deeply. And then she looked down, her attention catching on something on his desk.

She quickly turned back towards him, looking at him for the first time since she had set foot in his room, her eyes blinking like she had just woken up. Her crossed arms fell to her sides as she stepped towards him, and with no warning, she threw her arms around his neck and pressed her mouth against his. It was so unexpected, but he didn't want to stop her, so he grasped the top of her upper arms and held her tight against him, until her lips grew so insistent that he couldn't keep ahold of himself, and his hands slipped down to her waist and pulled her hips up against his. _Fuck, if they kept this up, he wouldn't make it to the bed. _

_She loved him, yeah, she don't want to leave this way  
__She feeds him, yeah, that's why she'll be back again  
__Can't find a better man  
__Can't find a better man  
__Can't find a better man  
__Can't find a better man_

It was just all happening so fast. They had been standing there, kissing, and then somehow they ended up on his bed – she wasn't quite sure which of them had made that happen – and blood was roaring in her ears and his warm mouth was against her neck and then his cut and his t-shirt were laying on the floor next to hers.

She had been so nervous going into his room, her earlier confidence from the kitchen dissipating the moment she saw his bed. It wasn't as if she didn't know, obviously, that his bedroom would have a bed, but seeing it there, so very real, threw into stark relief the earlier decision she had made. So she had looked away, and instead busied herself with all the things in his room, allowing her to indulge her curiosity about him, and, perhaps more importantly, serving as a distraction from the low-grade panic that was coursing through her. She could tell that he was watching her and she didn't know if this was reassuring or if it was just making her more nervous. But, honestly, she just didn't know what to do. She had asked to see his room and now she was there, but he wasn't doing anything and she wasn't able to bring herself to do anything either.

And then she had looked down. Sitting on top of what looked like some half-filled-out class registration forms was a small pink paperback. It still looked pretty new – not that different from what it had looked like when she bought it for him so many weeks ago – but it was there on his desk, in his room, like it mattered. _Like she mattered. _

She had turned and looked at him, catching his blue eyes with hers, and, suddenly, she hadn't been able to get to him fast enough.

Now they were entwined in his bed, his hands caught up in her hair as their mouths met, and it felt amazing – _he felt amazing_ – and she ran her hands up against the smoothness of his back, sensing the muscle underneath. She closed her eyes and tried to let go, to just let herself feel what was happening to her, but then he moved his hand down towards her ribs, nonchalantly skimming his fingers up towards the clasp of her bra, and there was something about it that just felt so _practiced_, as if this was a move he had used a hundred times before. _God, he probably _had_ used it a hundred times_, she thought. She wanted to turn off her brain, make it stop second-guessing every single fucking thing, but it wouldn't let go of her, reminding her that the two of them had never talked about being exclusive, that he could be making out with other girls – _shit, even sleeping with other girls_ – and she would have no idea. And wasn't she just doing this on a whim, anyway? All it took was some concert tickets and a good song and she was ready to give it up? Is that what he thought of her? Was that what she was?

She opened her eyes and looked at him, realizing that he was still holding her, but that his hands weren't moving. She tried to take a full and steady breath.

"You okay?" he asked, his voice rough.

"Yeah," she answered, nodding a little. "I just don't know that I can…" She couldn't bring herself to say the words out loud. "Not tonight."

"Is that what you're worried about?" His arms tightened slightly around her.

"It's just… I'm sorry. I know you probably thought…" She felt so stupid. Even though she hadn't said it outright, he had known what she was saying when she asked to come over. She couldn't imagine how frustrated he must be, how mad.

"I didn't think anything," he said, looking straight into her eyes.

"And we had never talked about it…" she continued, not being able to fully meet his gaze, or even to acknowledge what he had just said. "And I didn't know if there was anyone else, and I guess I would want to know… if there was."

He was silent for a moment, and she could feel a ripping sensation forming in her chest.

"There's no one else, Tara. There's only you." He said it softly, clearly, and she realized that she believed him.

"Oh." She didn't know what else to say.

"Is there anyone else for you?" he asked, in apparent seriousness, although she wanted to laugh. And then she could sense that he was waiting for her to answer.

"No," she replied, in the most solemn tone she could muster.

"Good," he said. He didn't say anything else, so they just lay there for a while, still draped across each other, and she didn't really know what to do. It would be weird to just go to sleep, and after all the drama she had given him, it didn't seem right to try to kiss him again. She contemplated going to retrieve her shirt from the floor, but then it might be strange if she was fully dressed and he wasn't, and he might even think she wanted to go home.

"You just started that book, the Kerouac?" he asked, his voice startling her from her thoughts.

"Yeah," she said, a little confused. But she was impressed he remembered the name.

"Why don't you read some of it to me?"

"You want me to read it to you?" She didn't get it. Why would he want that? What could possibly be the appeal of having her here, in his bed, listening to her read from a forty-year-old book?

"Yeah," he said, as he untangled himself from her and went over to where her bag lay on the floor. He dug through it, finally pulling out the book, and then came back and handed it to her.

"Uh, okay." She opened the book to the beginning and looked over at him. He had gotten back in bed and was laying on his pillow, half-turned towards her, his fingers tracing patterns on the bedspread.

"'I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up,'" she read. "'I had just gotten over a serious illness that I won't bother to talk about, except that it had something to do with the miserably weary split-up and my feeling that everything was dead. With the coming of Dean Moriarty began the part of my life you could call my life on the road. Before that I'd often dreamed of going West to see the country, always vaguely planning and never taking off.' You want me to keep going?" she stopped to ask.

"Yeah, it sounds cool," he said.

"Okay." She took a breath and kept reading, trying her best to pronounce all the unfamiliar words correctly and looking over at him from time to time to make sure he didn't seem too bored. "'…This is all far back, when Dean was not the way he is today, when he was a young jailkid shrouded in mystery. Then news came that Dean was out of reform school and was coming to New York for the first time; also there was talk that he had just married a girl called Marylou.'"

And she glanced down at him and realized he was asleep, half-moons of blond lashes resting against his bottom eyelids. She gently reached over him and pulled up the edge of the bedspread, draping it over his half-dressed body. And then she found the other side and pulled it across herself, settling herself down onto the bed, his relaxed face the last thing she saw before she closed her eyes.


	9. Only In Dreams

_You can't resist her  
__She's in your bones  
__She is your marrow  
__And your ride home  
__You can't avoid her  
__She's in the air, in the air  
__In between molecules  
__Of oxygen and carbon dioxide…_

He had been dreaming about his dad again.

He has these dreams sometimes, where he circles overhead like a bird, watching as his father crashes into the semi, and he's powerless to do anything. He can only float and scream out within his own skull as he watches the approach, and he always wakes just at the moment of impact. Only this time was different, for some reason. His dad's sky-blue Knucklehead was darker, more of an ocean blue, and instead of open road behind him, he was being followed by more than a dozen cop cars, lights and sirens blazing. It still ended the same way, though, with the collision and a start as his body jolted awake.

His eyes blinked open with growing awareness and all he could see at first was a mass of brown hair, connected, as he gazed further down, to a small female form partially wrapped in his bedspread. She was on her side, tucked half-way into him, and under the bedspread his arm draped lightly over her waist. Jax could feel the tiny contraction of her ribs as she breathed in and out, still clearly asleep.

He was also wrapped in the bedspread, but he must have thrown part of it off in the night, as only his lower half was covered. He wasn't quite sure how they ended up this way; the last thing he remembered was her reading from the book about New York and Dean something-or-other, and he must have been really tired and fallen asleep, which was pretty shitty of him, considering that he had asked her to read to him in the first place.

He knew it was kind of strange, to ask her to do that, and he still wasn't really sure why he had asked at all. He did like hearing her voice, though. And he liked the fact that she read all this stuff – even though he hadn't even heard of half of it – and he knew there had to be something to it if it interested her so much. Almost all of what Jax had ever read had been required, and it had just been so mind-numbingly boring that he could never have imagined looking at it for fun. He remembered going with her to that bookstore in San Francisco and how he had thought that it was so weird that people just spent hours walking around, looking at books, like there was something _to look at_. And then she had bought him the book, which had made him kind of nervous because she had stared at him like she expected him to start reading it right then and there and discuss it with her. He had left it out on his desk, though, so maybe one of these days he would try it out. It wasn't required, so it might not be so bad.

He knew at some point he would have to move and wake her up, but he didn't want to just yet. He had no idea what time it was, but morning light was filtering in through his blinds, filling the whole room with a soft glow. Jax realized this was the second time he had slept with her next to him. _Shit, that was a goddamn record_.

It was probably good they had finally talked a little last night. She had seemed better after that, but he still didn't totally understand why she freaked out the way she did. He had felt her whole body start to tense, quiet and still under his hands, and her eyes were far away, even though just minutes before she had seemed eager enough. It was hard to know what was going on in her head – knowing her, probably a lot – and even harder to know what to do to help her. He had thought she might just put her shirt back on and then ask him to take her home, and was happy when she didn't.

She murmured softly, and he felt her burrowing slightly into him, waking up but still not fully conscious. In response, he wrapped his arm around her a little tighter, pulling her towards him in an uncharacteristically possessive way. Under the bedspread, her knees lightly scraped against his.

And then her head rubbed gently against her shoulder, turning upwards, her half-lidded eyes meeting his in a haze of sleep and soft confusion.

"Mornin'," he whispered.

_Only in dreams  
__We see what it means  
__Reach out our hands  
__Hold on to hers  
__But when we wake  
__It's all been erased  
__And so it seems  
__Only in dreams…_

As Tara woke up, she was filled with the sensation of knowing she had been dreaming, but felt the memory of the dream slowly draining away, like water rushing through her fingers. She had been running, looking for something, and then somehow she couldn't run, her legs rooted and weighted down like lead. But now, as her eyes were opening up to the sun-lit room, even those vague outlines were slowly erased.

It took her a moment to remember where she was, and her eyes darted down to their half-dressed forms, then to the tiny interwoven fibers of the blue and black plaid bedspread, and finally to his arm, so heavy and perfect as it lay against her. She looked back up at him, hearing the slow rhythm of her heart, losing herself for a moment in the outer edge of his irises where they smudged into a darker shade of blue. And then she realized that he had said something to her.

"Hey," she said, her voice thick. A yawn involuntarily escaped her, and she pulled up her hand to cover her mouth. "What time is it?"

"Dunno," he replied. "Can't be too late, though. The sun's still coming in." He pushed himself up on one arm so he could peer around her. "Eight thirty," he said, dropping back down beside her with a little crash. "You working today?"

"Yeah, from three to eleven." She sighed. She hated closing; it always took longer than it ought to, and she somehow ended up always getting stuck with the shitty parts like mopping the floors or cleaning out the beer drain with bleach. "What about you?"

"Nah, not 'til Saturday." She watched as he rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. He still hadn't moved his arm from where it was caught around her. It was hard not to be conscious of the fact that she was just wearing her jeans and a bra, and she was glad that the bedspread at least covered most of her.

"So, uh… what's gonna happen with you staying out all night?" he asked. "Is your dad gonna be pissed?"

"I told him that last night I was going to be hanging out with a friend from work," she said. "I'll just… I don't know, I'll just tell him that we were hanging out and I fell asleep." She shrugged her shoulders a bit. A part of her knew it wasn't good to be lying so much to her dad, but it was so much easier this way, when she didn't have him breathing down her neck, pretending like he actually gave a shit.

"You know, one day he might want to meet your friend," he said, his eyebrow raised, eyes glinting in amusement. "Seeing as how you're spending so much time together."

"Not anytime soon, I hope." _She could not imagine introducing her dad and Jax. Not even if her dad was miraculously sober when it happened_.

She shivered a little bit, under the bedspread, and he raised his arm and began to rub her upper arm with his palm, the friction of it spilling warmth onto her skin. He glanced over at her, his eyes open, his face still and unreadable. Their gazes held for a moment, but to Tara it seemed far too short, or maybe far too long. He suddenly unrolled himself from the bedspread and jumped to his feet, and she couldn't help but steal a long look at his bare torso as he was bathed in morning light. He reached down to the floor and grabbed her t-shirt, before walking back over and handing it to her.

"Here," he said, and then he turned his back to her again and moved over in the direction of his bookshelf. Quickly, she took advantage of the fact that he was looking in the opposite direction and sat up on the bed, threading her arms through the sleeves of her shirt and pulling it over her head.

She had thought he might put his shirt on, too, but then he squatted down in front of the boom box and picked up a CD, taking the disc out of the case and dropping it into the empty tray. He fiddled with the control buttons and adjusted the volume, and as he made his way back to the bed and climbed in, laying down next to her, she could hear the faint beat of drums and an opening guitar chord.

"I wanted to listen to the sweater song," he said, somewhat sheepishly. "It got stuck in my head." And then he playfully grasped her wrist and pulled her down towards him. "C'mere…" She squealed as she landed against his chest.

_You walk up to her  
__Ask her to dance  
__She says, Hey baby  
__I just might take the chance  
__You say, It's a good thing  
__That you float in the air, in the air  
__That way there's no way  
__I will crush your pretty  
__Toenails into a thousand pieces…_

He missed feeling the expanse of her bare skin. Now she was lying on his chest, resting on her forearms, and his hands were encircling the narrow of her back, but holding her through the fabric of her t-shirt was a pale substitute for the smooth warmth he had grasped before. When he had seen her shirt on the floor, though, it had made him realize that she might be more comfortable if she had it back. And now, he could tell, she was more than comfortable, draped across him she was, no longer concealing herself under the edges of the bedspread. Strands of dark hair fell past her shoulders and traced like silk against his skin.

"What're you doing 'til three, then?" he asked.

"I don't know," she replied. "Hadn't really planned anything… I am kind of hungry, though."

"Okay. Task one: feed Tara." He settled back into the mattress and found himself holding her a little tighter. It was as if he didn't know how to stop touching her. "What else?"

"Well, what about 'feed Jax'?" she asked, her eyebrows raised questioningly. "Is that task two?"

He smirked. "Feed Tara and feed Jax are a package deal. Two-for-one. So what's after that?"

"I was supposed to take a practice test at some point," she said, wrinkling her nose. "They want to know your baseline score." _He had forgotten that she was doing that SAT class_. He couldn't think of anything more God-awful than having to sit in a room with twenty other people for three hours a week and play around with filling in all those tiny fucking circles.

"That's what you were gonna do this morning?" he asked skeptically.

"Well… maybe... The class starts Monday."

"No, no way… I'm vetoing that," he said, pulling his hands up to her waist and rolling both of them over, so he was nearly on top of her. Her eyes opened wide in surprise, but then she laughed a little, her palms now flat against the planes of his chest. "No way that's task two."

He felt something digging into his side, against his ribs, so he reached down to grab whatever it was. _Oh, right, her book_. Somehow it must have been left on the bed when they fell asleep. He leaned back, resting on his side and glanced over the cover, flipping it so he could see the front and back. She was watching him, he could tell, so he handed the book back to her quickly, even though they were so close to one another that it didn't actually travel that far.

"So what ends up happening?" he asked. "They all go west?" He saw that her gaze had dropped to the book in her hands, her thumb tracing along the edge of the pages, as if itching to open it.

"I don't know," she replied. "As far as I read to you, that's how far I got." She looked over at him and grinned. "But, I mean, it is called _On the Road_… so they probably end up going _somewhere_." Her eyes were still on him as she exhaled and then laid the book down on her chest.

"If you could go anywhere, where would you go?" she asked, her sun-lit face full of curiosity.

Jax let out a breath and fell back on the mattress, resting his head in the curved crook of his arm. _Go anywhere?_ The thing was, he had no idea. It was kind of strange, because he had the bike and could theoretically go anywhere he wanted, even if he never actually did it. The farthest he had ever been had been on a road trip with his parents and his little brother; Jax had been ten and Tommy, five. They had gone through Yosemite and then to the Grand Canyon, and then finally, _finally_, ended up at Disneyland, which had been the best two days of his young life. He had gone on Space Mountain with his dad more times than he could count, and had thrown up after the last ride, but it had been amazing anyway. And he knew, as he lay next to her, if he could go anywhere, it wouldn't be a place. It would be a time.

He turned back on his side, curling up against her, his fingers tracing against the sewn hem of her t-shirt.

"You tell me," he said. "Where should I go?"

_Only in dreams  
__We see what it means  
__Reach out our hands  
__Hold on to hers  
__But when we wake  
__It's all been erased  
__And so it seems  
__Only in dreams…_

A piece of his hair had flopped forward, almost in his eyes. Tara couldn't help but stare at it as he was talking, and she wanted so badly to push it back in place, to comb her fingers through the soft lengths of his dirty blond hair. And then she realized, _she could_. She was still getting used to this idea, that there was this other person who she could touch whenever she wanted, and who seemed to like it when she did. She had never had that before, at least not since she was a kid, with her mom, and the whole thing was so strange and wonderful, and weirdly addictive.

But he had asked her a question, so she settled for just tucking the piece of hair behind his ear before she lay back down next to him.

"Hmmm, where should you go?" she repeated. She paused and pursed her lips, saying the first thing that popped into her head. "How about Paris?" She smiled as she said it, and she knew she was being ridiculous, but she loved the idea of it anyway. Jax in his cut, in front of the Mona Lisa, or sitting in some sidewalk café, drinking from a tiny cup of coffee. "You could go get your picture taken in front of the Eiffel Tower…"

He smirked even as he narrowed his eyes in doubt. "How 'bout I stay in the country?"

"Fine," she said, leaning down to drop her book on the floor, and then she curled up on her side, her body mirroring his. "All fifty states, or just the continental U.S.?" She was enjoying this game.

"Whatever you want."

"Oh, do I get to come, too?" she asked.

"'Course," he replied. "Wouldn't be much fun without you."

She had just been teasing, but she realized that he was serious, at least on some level, and she felt her heart push outward against the over-tight cage of her ribs.

"How about New York?" she asked, wanting to shift the topic a little. "Everyone always wants to go to New York." That seemed true, at least; she was dying to go there.

"Too far. And it seems kinda crowded and loud." His hand, which had been playing with the hem of her shirt, had slowly snaked across her waist, his fingers tracing the bottom of her ribcage through the fabric.

"Seattle? L.A.?"

His face squeezed in an expression of partial distaste as he shrugged his shoulder. "I don't really like cities that much."

"Okay, what about a national park?" she offered. "We could go to Yellowstone and see Old Faithful."

"I kinda like it here," he said, and she felt him move closer towards her, his hand now running along her spine, their knees nearly touching.

"What, in Charming?"

"In this bed," he said, grinning.

"Funny," she scoffed, and she lightly punched him on the shoulder.

He caught her wrist before she could pull it back, and he sandwiched her hand between the two of his, the entirety of his attention focused on his thumb as it traced the pale blue veins that threaded beneath her skin. She couldn't understand what it was that held such fascination for him, but he was touching her in a way that made it seem like all of her, not just the back of her hand, but her face, her body, all the way down to the bottom of her toes, was entirely ablaze.

"Maybe we should, though," he said, still looking at her hand.

"What?" she asked, still partially lost in her thoughts.

He looked up at her, pulling her hand fully into his grasp. "Take a trip somewhere. I've got the bike. We could go anywhere you want."

"What, overnight?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"Uh, maybe." It was hard to answer him – _fuck, it was hard to form coherent thoughts_ – with his face so close to hers, the warmth of his breath spilling across her skin.

"It'd be fun," he said. He raised his head slightly and his mouth found her collarbone as it poked beyond the edge of her shirt. "We could camp out…" His hair was against her cheek and she felt warmth and pressure against her throat. "Toast marshmallows…" He moved higher, to the column of her neck. "Tell ghost stories…" Now he was on the edge of her jaw, and she closed her eyes, knowing she was doomed, and giving in to it anyway.

_Only in dreams  
__Only in dreams  
__Only in dreams  
__Only in dreams  
__Only in dreams  
__Only in dreams_

Nearly the whole album had played through as they were talking on his bed, and now they were on a song Jax could barely remember having heard before, but it had this strange hypnotic quality, with an instrumental sequence that seemed to be going on forever.

She was in his arms and he didn't know how he would ever pull away from her, not that he even felt any desire to. Jax had never done a lot of drugs – sure, he had smoked some weed and even done X once when he was bored and curious – but at this moment he understood what it might feel like to be an addict, what it might be like to need something so badly that you couldn't even remain in control of yourself.

He had never met anyone like her. There was no one else he could talk to like this, no one else who understood him the way she did. With her, he was just _himself_, and for some reason, totally beyond him, she seemed to like him that way.

And when she was touching him – just like she was doing now – he was completely undone.

Her hands were everywhere, running through his hair, grasping his forearms, tracing the sensitive skin along his stomach, and while she seemed hesitant to go anywhere below his waist, what she was doing was more than enough to provoke a reaction. He had discovered a particularly sensitive spot himself, right below her earlobe, where her jaw met her neck, and he had enjoyed the process of playfully paying her back for what she had done to him. His hands were at her waist, but his fingertips edged against the hem of her t-shirt, finding bare skin, and all she did was kiss him harder, her tongue meeting his in the warm depths of her mouth. So he threaded his fingers up past her shirt, losing himself in the feel of velvet smoothness against his palms. She quickly stopped kissing him – he was sure he had fucked something up by touching her like that – but she just grabbed the hem of her shirt and pulled it over her head. She was smiling and then he was smiling at her, and they found each other again, mouths and hands meeting, legs now intertwined. He felt like his heart was going to explode and he had no idea where this was going, but he knew he would follow her anywhere.

And then, in whatever small part of his brain that remained unoccupied, he recognized a sound. It was the front door, slamming shut.

"Jackson…?" And then a voice, from miles away, or maybe just the living room.

He froze, pulling his mouth from hers. "Oh, shit," he whispered. "My mom's home."


	10. Nothing Else Matters

_So close no matter how far  
__Couldn't be much more from the heart  
__Forever trusting who we are  
__And nothing else matters  
__Never opened myself this way  
__Life is ours, we live it our way  
__All these words I don't just say  
__And nothing else matters…_

A second later, and the words had begun to fully register in the dizzy landscape of her brain. His mom was home, clearly much earlier than he had expected. Tara swiveled her head rapidly towards the partially-open door – not that there was anything to see – and then looked back at him, trying to gauge the appropriate level of panic. _Was this going to be a huge deal? Was she going to get screamed at, kicked out of the house? Or was it not actually that bad? Would his mom not actually care that much that she was there? Oh, shit, the last one would be worse, wouldn't it? Maybe this happens all the fucking time._ Her heart was frozen, yet somehow still clenching and unclenching. She hadn't really wanted to meet his mom all that much to begin with, and this was definitely not how she wanted to meet _anyone_, not wearing last night's clothes and the memory of his hands still warm on her skin. It was flooding over her, the sudden realization that she was the kind of girl who would wake up half-dressed in a boy's room in the morning, and it was even worse to realize that she was the kind of girl who would be caught doing it.

Jax had scrambled up off the bed, and was searching for his shirt on the floor. She wanted him to look at her, smile at her, tell her something, anything. She couldn't stop the cascade of her thoughts, shuffling rapidly through her head like a deck of cards.

"Uh, what should I do?" she asked, hesitantly.

But he didn't answer her, only picked up her shirt off the ground where it had been thrown and handed it to her. She silently got up off the bed as she grasped it and pulled it on over her head, not knowing what to say, if there was anything to say; some part of her curled painfully inward, overcome by the sensation of feeling small and alone. All she could do was tense her bare toes into the cushion of the carpet fibers.

"Jackson, get your ass out of bed!" His mom's voice was echoing from a nearby hallway.

Tara looked back at the bed, which looked slept on, but not in, for whatever that might be worth. Jax took a step towards the door, as if he was going to try to go find his mom first, before she came in – and Tara was pierced with a small ray of hope that maybe all of this could be avoided – but then someone moved into the shadow of the doorframe, pushing the door fully open.

The first thing Tara noticed, after the tight denim and helmet of highlighted hair, was the fact that her left arm was wrapped up in a black nylon sling, secured with a strap around her neck.

"Shit, mom, what happened?" Jax asked.

Tara watched as she blew out an exasperated breath, tiny hairs in her bangs flying upward. "Tripped and fell and sprained my wrist." As his mom spoke, she was looking at Jax, but her eyes began to move slowly across the room. "No point in stayin', I'm on so many goddamn pain meds…" Her voice trailed off as her gaze reached Tara.

She said nothing, only raised her perfectly-carved eyebrows a minuscule degree, her face betraying no emotion at all. Even if Tara could have thought of something to say, she doubted she would have been able to speak; she felt paralyzed, kept motionless just by the power of this woman looking at her. And then she saw Jax take another step, moving so he stood more between them.

"So, uh, mom, this is my girlfriend, Tara." His head turned between the two of them. "And, Tara, this is my mom."

It was so strange, because he looked serious. He hadn't said it like a joke, like he was about to wink at her and then they would laugh later at the ridiculousness of the idea. He had said it almost casually, like this was something they had said before, a word they had played around with for months, not something that she would never have expected him to actually say, not like this.

She must have been staring at him, because once she glanced back at his mom, still standing in the doorway, Tara noticed that her expression had subtly shifted, her eyes narrowed slightly, a pull of tension written into the lines of her neck. Tara knew she needed to say something, mostly so she didn't make an even worse impression than she already had.

"Uh, hi," she said, the words unfortunately coming out like a soft squeak. "Nice to meet you, Mrs. Teller…" _Oh, fuck, had she changed her name when she remarried? _"…I mean, uh, Mrs. Morrow…"

The words hung in the air uncomfortably, and Tara watched as his mom's gaze slowly shifted from her over to Jax and then back again to her. She felt a massive urge to look away, to find some tiny space on the carpet to stare at.

"Tara, right?" she finally said, her head tilting slightly. "Mind if I talk to my son for a minute?" She didn't wait for an answer, even if Tara had maintained the presence of mind to offer one. "Excuse us," was all she said in parting, as she turned around and stalked back down the hallway.

As he followed, Jax shrugged his shoulders, his eyes catching hers for one split second. And then she was left alone, standing in the middle of his room, the air still and hushed, morning light illuminating the tiny specks of dust slowly floating in gentle suspension.

_Trust I seek and I find in you  
__Every day for us something new  
__Open mind for a different view  
__And nothing else matters  
__Never cared for what they do  
__Never cared for what they know  
__But I know…_

The moment his mom reached the dining room table, she started digging around in her purse for her cigarettes. She finally found the pack and pulled one out, pressing it between her lips, but with her arm in the sling she couldn't really light it, and after the second attempt, Jax took the lighter from her hands and lit it for her. The blinds were shut, steeping the room in shadow, so the tiny embers glowed red against her mouth.

She took a quick drag. "Your girlfriend?" There was no mistaking the note of contempt in her voice.

"Yeah," he replied, leaning back against the table. He wasn't quite sure why he had said it; he had never called her that before, not even in his mind. But he realized, as he turned the word over in his thoughts, that it didn't bother him, that it was probably a better word than anything else for what she was to him. And while it seemed to go against his regular practice to tell his mom anything that personal, at least she'd know better not to say anything shitty about Tara now that it was just the two of them talking.

"She's been here all night?" she asked, as she pulled an ashtray from the center of the table and tapped her cigarette into it.

Jax nodded. There was no point in lying; it was way too early for Tara to be here for any real reason. And then, he remembered with a half-hidden smile, there was her rumpled hair, flattened a little on one side from where she had slept on it.

"Her parents know she's been here?"

"You care about her parents?" he asked, raising his eyes up towards her.

She raised an eyebrow, and he just held her gaze, the moment stretching on until she seemed to remember the cigarette in her hand and took another pull.

"This what you've been doing when you're not at work, sneaking around with her?"

He didn't respond, but he knew that he didn't even need to.

"And she's the one you left work for a few weeks ago? The one you invited over to the club?"

He had to give it to her; she had put all the pieces together. A lot of people made assumptions about his mom, just from looking at her – they just saw some bimbo old lady whose only job was to look good in tight clothes as she hung on off the back of a bike – but he knew she was actually pretty fucking smart. She must have realized something was going on with him, and had known for a while, even though she hadn't said anything. And now he had given her the last piece of the goddamn puzzle.

"So, who is this girl? She got a last name?"

"What, you want to get to know her better?" he scoffed, smirking a little even as he crossed his arms over his chest.

"If she's gonna be with you, hell yes, I want to know her better." She took a final drag on her cigarette; it was almost down to the filter. She stubbed it out into the ashtray and then threw the half-empty pack and lighter back into her purse. Jax caught a glimpse of shadowy movement through the windows by the front of the house, and then through the blinds he could see Clay, pulling suitcases from out of the trunk of the car.

"You should bring her to the Fourth of July barbecue at the club..." his mom said. "Introduce her to everyone…"

_Right, the barbecue_. He had forgotten that was coming up soon. But he didn't really understand why his mom would want her there; it was normally just for the brothers and their families. And the idea of giving his mom an opportunity to corner Tara… _fuck, that was worrisome all in itself. _

"I'll think about it. She might have to work anyway." He started to walk back towards his room, but then he turned back to face her. "Look, I want you to be nice to her, okay? Don't scare her or anything."

It was probably stupid to have said that – and he knew that his mom would undoubtedly see it as an excuse to worm her way into everything he had tried so hard to keep her out of – but some part of him hoped that she would actually listen, that she would somehow understand that Tara was important to him, that she wouldn't try to play all her usual games.

As he walked back into his room, he saw Tara sitting on the edge of his bed. She had put on her shoes and pulled her hair up, and as he came in, she looked over at him, biting her bottom lip softly. He suddenly felt like shit for having left her by herself, even though he hadn't really had much of a choice. And then there was just this overwhelming urge to undo her hair and run his fingers through it, to feel her warmth underneath him again. She didn't say anything, so he just sat down next to her, the mattress giving slightly under his weight.

"Sorry 'bout that," he said. "Do you want me to take you home?"

"Did you mean that?" she asked. He could sense she wasn't talking about what he just asked her.

"Mean what?"

"About me being your girlfriend?"

He turned his head towards her, filled with the strange and unexpected fear that she might not _want_ him to call her that, that she might not feel the same way about him. "Uh, yeah, is that okay?"

"Yeah, it's okay," she said, nodding. And she smiled a little at him, her gaze dropping down to the floor, and he could breathe now, air beginning its slow return back to his lungs.

_So close no matter how far  
__Couldn't be much more from the heart  
__Forever trust in who we are  
__And nothing else matters  
__Never cared for what they do  
__Never cared for what they know  
__But I know…_

She stepped off the bike onto the asphalt of the parking lot, shading her eyes as she stared at the tiny storefront at the end of the deserted strip mall. Brightly-colored words in Spanish curved across the windows, referencing various items on the menu, most of which she had never heard of. The place didn't even look open.

"Uh, you sure about this?" she asked him as he came up next to her, stuffing his keys back in his pocket.

"I thought you said you were hungry," he said.

"Uh, yeah, but…"

"Look, this place is one of my best kept secrets. Just trust me, okay?"

"Uh, okay…" she replied. "If you say so…" He tilted his head towards her, his eyes a soft entreaty, and she found herself following him across the small parking lot, her concerns slowly evaporating. It didn't stop her, of course, from wondering what his _other_ secrets were.

They walked inside – Tara noted that the items listed on the wall menu were still all in Spanish and mostly unrecognizable – and he went up to the counter in the back, where an older Hispanic woman was standing next to the register.

"_Hola, Susanna, buenos días_…" Jax said as he grinned at the woman, who smiled warmly back, and then he looked over at the menu and pursed his lips. "_Por favor, huevos rancheros y tres tacos con chorizo. Y un poco de salsa verde también. Por aquí, gracias_." He turned back towards Tara. "The green sauce's really good…"

She couldn't help but be impressed. This was a side of him she had never really seen, and she liked how grown-up he seemed, not like a typical seventeen year-old guy.

"I didn't know you spoke Spanish," she said, sidling up next to him and leaning so her chin rested against his shoulder.

"Year and a half with Señora Mills," he said sarcastically. Tara smirked; everyone knew you could sleep through her class all year and still end up with an A-minus. "And I come here a lot… So most of my vocabulary is about things to eat." As she moved over so he could reach in his back pocket for his wallet, she couldn't help but take a deep breath, savoring the lingering scent that permeated his shirt.

After he paid, they found a table, although it wasn't hard: there were only four tables in the whole place, all of them covered in flower-patterned vinyl tablecloths.

"So I think your mom hates me," she said, as they sat waiting for their food. Each time she thought back to how she had acted around his mom – going all frozen and quiet – she inwardly cringed. It had been so weird, though, to be around an adult who clearly didn't trust her, who didn't seem to like anything about her.

"Nah, she's just like that," he replied, shaking his head a little. "She'll be fine."

"Yeah, well, I just don't want her to get a bad impression."

"Look, you shouldn't worry about my mom, okay? She'll get to know you, then she'll see…"

She was about to ask when exactly she and his mom were supposed to get to know each other better, but their food arrived, nested in aluminum foil and red plastic baskets. He pushed two of the baskets in front of her.

"I shoulda asked…" he said. "How are you on spicy food?"

She shrugged her shoulders. "Okay, I think. Why?"

She picked up the taco and took a generous bite. It was salty and rich and then suddenly her mouth was on fire. She started coughing, trying to cover her mouth as she swallowed, while her eyes teared up a little.

His expression turned immediately to concern. "Here… oh shit, let me get you some water," he said, jumping up, and then he returned quickly with a half-full plastic cup. "That should help... Oh, man, I'm really sorry."

She took a gulp of water, which seemed to quiet the inside of her mouth somewhat. "No, it's okay... It's good, actually… when there's less of it." She coughed and then swallowed again. "Just, maybe, next time... no green sauce."

"Yeah, yeah… okay," he said, nodding. "Sure."

And then they both looked at each other, caught up in the silliness of the situation, and she couldn't help but giggle, and then he started laughing, too. She was suddenly glad the restaurant was so empty; almost no one was around to see them acting like such dumbasses.

Jax was still grinning as he rubbed his palms against his face. "Yeah, I'm real sorry… I've been coming here since I was a kid. I must just be used to it."

"Did you come here with your dad a lot?" she asked softly. It was interesting how she could pick up on these things now, see the way that his life was still shaped by all the time that he and his dad had spent together.

"Yeah…" he said, meeting her gaze. And then he pushed his chair away from the table. "Here, let me grab you a spoon… You can take off some of the sauce."

After most of the overwhelming spiciness was gone, she found that the chorizo itself was pretty tasty, especially mixed with the shredded cheese and corn tortilla. "This _is_ a really good best kept secret," she said, as she balled up the loose aluminum sheet and threw it back in the basket.

"I know… You gotta promise not to tell anyone, though," he said, leaning towards her, his voice low.

"So this isn't where you take all your new girlfriends?" She had meant it to sound casual, offhand, but she knew the tone in her voice was betraying the tension she felt deep inside. Because the moment she said it, she realized that she didn't really want him to answer. If there were other girls he had done this with, it was just better to not know at all.

"Nah…" he said, taking another bite of his taco. "I've never had a girlfriend before."

_I never opened myself this way  
__Life is ours, we live it our way  
__All these words I don't just say  
__And nothing else matters  
__Trust I seek and I find in you  
__Every day for us something new  
__Open mind for a different view  
__And nothing else matters…_

She was still smiling at him. Even as they had finished their food and started talking about a bunch of different things, the slight smile curving across her mouth remained in place, making him wonder exactly what had been responsible for it. Jax really loved it when she smiled. Sometimes she seemed so worried, like there was some great weight pressing down on her, and there were a few times, mostly right after he picked her up at home, when she just looked so fucking sad it made him want to beat the crap out of something. He knew about her mom, of course, and she didn't seem to have much in her life aside from school, but he was certain there was more to it, something deeper, beyond the bare outlines she had let him see.

Which was why he was just enjoying seeing her like this.

While they were eating, he had kept thinking about what his mom said. Maybe bringing Tara to the Fourth of July barbecue might be a good idea after all. If he could keep his mom at a reasonable distance – and how hard could that really be, if he stuck around Tara? – then this might be a chance for her to see a little bit more of his life when he wasn't with her, maybe meet a few more of the brothers officially, get a little more comfortable in the world of the club. Hell, it might even be fun; he had always loved the barbecue as a kid, eating giant slices of watermelon, lighting up sparklers in the parking lot and running around until he got tired, climbing up to the roof with the other kids and waiting to watch the fireworks. And, the thing was, she was in his life now, so why shouldn't everyone know it?

He wiped off his hands on a spare napkin and threw it into his plastic basket.

"Uh, so… I don't know if you've got plans for the Fourth..." he said. "Do you have to work that day?"

"I don't think so," she replied. "The day before, maybe. The Fourth is a Tuesday, right?"

"Yeah," he said.

"So… yeah, I'm free. What did you want to do?" She rested her chin in her hand, her elbow propped on the vinyl surface of the tablecloth.

"So the club always throws a barbecue on the Fourth of July… They pull out the big grill, and there's corn on the cob and pie. And then everyone watches the fireworks."

"Who's everyone?" she asked.

"Oh, it's all the brothers and their families, always a lot of little kids." He knew he was selling this like it was some kind of church social, but he realized, as soon as he started talking about it, how much he wanted her to come. It was SAMCRO, so it would never be _wholesome_ exactly, but once she was there, he knew she would have a good time.

"And you're inviting me…?"

"Yeah…" he said. "I mean, if you want to come."

The tiny smile slowly widened, reaching deep to the corners of her mouth, her cheeks now round and full. "Yeah, of course… Sounds fun."

He looked at her, suddenly and bizarrely grateful for his mother's surprise arrival this morning, for her bullshit questioning and poorly-veiled attempts to gather information, if only for the fact that it had brought him to this moment, to see her smile like that.

They were both quiet for a minute, her attention beginning to drift to the crumpled aluminum and plastic baskets littering the table.

And then she sighed. "Guess I should try to get to that practice test at some point this weekend," she said, resignation heavy in her voice.

"Your class is on Monday?" he asked.

"Yeah, four to seven." But she quickly looked up at him, her eyes bright and eager, clearly due to some idea that had just popped into her head. "Can we do something afterwards?" she pleaded. "At least then I can get through it without losing my mind…"

"Uh, yeah, sure," he replied, nodding. He would definitely be done at the garage by then.

"Maybe we could rent a movie or something?" she asked. Now it was his turn to sigh, although more in protest than anything else. She knew he wasn't much for sitting still in one place for a long time – unless it was an action movie or something with a lot of car chases or explosions, it was hard for him to stay focused and he normally ended up just talking over it or trying to distract her in much more underhanded ways – but she was still smiling at him and he didn't want it to stop.

"Pressing your luck there, darlin'…" he warned, his voice stern, but they both knew it was all for show.

_Never cared for what they say  
__Never cared for games they play  
__Never cared for what they do  
__Never cared for what they know  
__And I know  
__So close no matter how far  
__Couldn't be much more from the heart  
__Forever trusting who we are  
__No, nothing else matters_

By four thirty, business had picked up a little, customers trickling in who had clearly left work early on Friday so they could get a start on their weekend fun. The A's were playing in Texas, and the game was starting in a half hour, so they would probably have a full crowd pretty soon.

All afternoon, she couldn't stop from looking down at her shirt. She knew it was stupid to have it on at work, where it would probably get stained with pizza sauce and beer, but she just wanted to wear it so badly, and she couldn't stand to wait until tomorrow. The band's name was plastered on the front, and on the back was the list of tour stops, "Sacramento, CA Cal Expo" written about a third of the way down. She wasn't originally going to get a shirt – it seemed a little silly and she didn't have the cash anyway – but he must have seen her staring over at the merchandise counter before the concert started. As soon as she had gotten back from the bathroom, he had handed a shirt to her, but hadn't said much of anything when she thanked him and offered to pay him back. It had been folded up in her bag since last night, but as she was getting dressed at home before her shift, she had pulled it out and smoothed it out on her bed, thinking about the show, about last night, and this morning.

She had nearly slept with him… _hadn't she? _At this point, she couldn't even be sure of exactly what had been happening in the jumbled landscape of her mind. Regardless, it probably would have been a mistake, just given her one more thing to freak out about. With the benefit of a few hours' distance, she could begin to understand the complete pointlessness of the anxiety she had suffered through the night before. It was all so stupid and unnecessary, all the games she had played in her own head, the way she had gotten caught up on some ridiculous promise she convinced herself she had made. And of course, the whole time, it hadn't even been an issue for him. She had been worried about trusting him, but maybe it was herself she had to figure out how to trust. If last night had taught her anything, it was that she needed to get the fuck out of her own head and let things happen when she wanted them to happen, _if_ she wanted them to happen. And if this morning had taught her anything, it was that some part of her wanted things to happen, and it wasn't really in the mood for patient deliberation.

She was standing against the counter, lost in thought, when she heard someone walking up behind her, the low sound of a throat being cleared.

Tara turned her head back and found herself looking at the heart-shaped face of the new girl, whose name she still couldn't remember. If she had thought about it earlier, she would have looked at the schedule posted by the time clock to see whose name had been listed beside hers.

"Hey, Dana…" she said, turning half-way and leaning on her side against the counter.

"It's Donna, actually," the girl replied.

"Oh, right, sorry…" Tara said, feeling bad, even though it had been a fifty-fifty shot.

"Yeah, it's okay…" she said, and then paused, as if looking for the words to say. Her jaw shifted from side to side a little, making Tara think of an incredibly anxious rabbit. "Uh, can I ask you something?"

"Sure… As long as it's not about refilling the soda machine. I still haven't figured that out," she said, smiling, but Donna didn't even seem phased by her half-hearted attempt at a joke.

"Are you friends with those two guys who came in yesterday?" she asked.

Whatever question Tara had been expecting, that was not it.

"Yeah…" Tara said. "The blond one is my boyfriend." _It sounded totally crazy to say out loud, but God, she really liked saying it out loud_.

"So what's the deal with the other one?"

"You mean Opie?" Did this have something to do with him sticking around after she and Jax went to Sacramento? She hoped he hadn't done anything bad, although it was hard to imagine Opie, of all people, doing anything objectionable.

"I guess… Is that his name?" Donna said. "So, yeah, after you left yesterday he just ordered food and sat in the booth and kept staring at me the whole time. After a while, he just took off."

Tara could feel her eyebrows meeting in an expression of pure confusion. "So… okay… he _looked_ at you for a while?"

"You don't think that's kinda weird?" Donna asked, her mouth twisting in distaste. "And all that black leather biker stuff, it gives me the creeps. That doesn't freak you out?"

"No..." Tara answered. "Opie's a good guy. They're both good guys. Don't… don't let the leather scare you." And she couldn't help but smile a little as she leaned back against the counter. Because it was true. And it had somehow taken her six weeks to realize how deeply and strongly she believed it.


	11. Everlong

_Hello  
__I've waited here for you  
__Everlong  
__Tonight I throw myself into and out of the red  
__Out of her head, she sang…_

_Fuck, it was hot_, Tara thought, as she pinched the front of her shirt and fanned it back and forth against her skin to get some much-needed air. The building's overhanging roof only offered a little shade, not enough to provide her any real relief. She considered going back inside to wait, in the blissful embrace of the air conditioning, but she knew he would be here any minute and she could stand to wait a bit longer. Once she got on the bike, the breeze would be sweet against her neck, billowing in under her shirt and cooling the sweat that was now trickling down the center of her back.

She shifted her stance, leaning her hip against the rectangular concrete pillar. The strap of her backpack was heavy against her shoulder, filled as it as with a huge practice book and a brand new binder with the test prep company's name printed on the front cover. And even though she hadn't made much progress on it over the weekend, she was still carrying around the Kerouac, along with a few other books that she had gotten earlier that afternoon.

The crappiest thing about this town – and there were many things that competed for that designation, at least in Tara's eyes – was the fact that there was only one bookstore. To make it even worse, the store was tiny and dusty and never seemed to have anything printed after 1985. There had been some time to kill before her class started, and the bookstore was on her way, so she walked over, hoping to find something else like Kerouac, something that Jax might enjoy, just in case he might want her to read out loud again. She had dug around in frustration through some random piles on the shelves – nothing seemed to be in the right place – and finally left with a volume of Bukowski poetry, a battered copy of _Naked Lunch_, and a book by Hunter S. Thompson about the Hells Angels, which looked interesting from her quick glance at the back cover. Over the past few weeks, she had been found herself becoming more curious about the world of motorcycle clubs and now that she was going to the barbecue next week, it would probably make sense to read up a little bit about them.

She heard a honk and a four-door Toyota pulled up alongside her, the passenger window rolled down.

"You want a ride somewhere?"

Through the open window she recognized the guy who had sat next to her during the SAT class. She had barely noticed him when he took the seat next to her, occupied as she was in her book, but once the class started, he started talking to her, making these little side comments and joking about what the instructor was saying. She had been trying to pay attention, so she didn't really respond, and he finally stopped bothering her after a while. Three months ago, she probably would have been excited by the idea of a boy trying to talk to her like that, but she had taken one look at his gelled hair and striped polo and realized that he just seemed really normal and, honestly, kind of boring.

"Thanks, I'm okay," she answered, not moving from where she was standing.

"You sure?" he half-yelled through the window. "It's super hot out."

The familiar growl of the bike began to echo in the air, and then she looked up to see Jax turning into the small parking lot, starting to thread his way towards the front of the building.

"My ride's here, so…" She was hoping the guy would take this moment to finally leave, but he swiveled his head back to see Jax approaching – his eyes widening a little after seeing the motorcycle, the leather cut – and quickly turned back to look at Tara.

"That's your ride?" he asked incredulously, as if he couldn't make sense of what he was seeing.

"Yeah, that's my boyfriend," she said, not even looking at him as she stepped down off the concrete curb and walked behind the car to where Jax was pulling up.

"Hey, babe," Jax said, as he pulled the bike to a stop and dropped his feet down to the asphalt, snapping off his helmet. "Who was that?" he asked, nodding his head in the direction of the car in front of him that was quickly driving away.

"No one," she answered, taking the helmet and moving closer to the bike so she could step on behind him. "Just some guy from my class."

"Aww, did you make a friend?" he said, sounding slightly patronizing. She knew he was teasing and normally it wouldn't have bothered her at all, but for some reason joking about the guy didn't seem that funny. She was going to have to deal with him for the next five weeks, and she was already dreading the thought of how awkward the next class would be.

"Yeah… and he promised to take me away from all this…" she said, sounding more irritated and sarcastic than she had originally intended.

Jax seemed completely unfazed by her comment, and curled an arm around to catch her by the waist, grinning widely. "Oh, now you're making me jealous…" he murmured, as he pulled her towards him and pressed his mouth against hers. She could feel heat rising in her chest, and where their bodies touched, tiny pinpricks of sweat were forming, moist against her skin. _Screw air conditioning_, she thought, as she coiled her arms around his neck, all her previous annoyances quickly forgotten.

_Come down and waste away with me  
__Down with me  
__Slow how you wanted it to be  
__I'm over my head  
__Out of her head, she sang…_

He could see the top of her head as she stood the next aisle over, her face tilted down as she examined the description on the back cover of one of the VHS boxes. She seemed totally focused, oblivious to her surroundings, so Jax decided to take the opportunity to quietly sneak around the corner of the aisle and sidle up behind her, grasping her quickly around her ribs and squeezing. She jumped in his hands, offering a startled squeal, and then whipped her head back to see who it was.

"Shit, you scared me..." she said, but just as quickly turned her attention back to the box in her hands. Both his arms snaked around her waist and he pulled her against him, pressing his nose against her hair, inhaling the floral aroma of her shampoo.

He had missed seeing her over the past few days, missed touching her like this, and even under the florescent lights of the tiny video store, he was getting lost in the feel of her, a dense and heady fog of desire encasing his brain. He felt this overwhelming need to hold her and keep her in his grasp, to somehow be certain that she would never slip away. At the same time, though, a part of him couldn't seem to let go of what had happened when he picked her up after her class. It was stupid, he knew; he hadn't even really seen the guy she was talking to. But just hearing her mention him – even her sarcastic joke that meant nothing – was enough to spark a flare of jealousy. It was bad enough that this random, faceless guy would get to spend time with her that Jax couldn't. And on some level, he knew that the guy represented all those things Jax couldn't be, not for her, at least: a normal teenager, someone she could talk to about classes and college and the goddamn SAT.

"What're you looking at?" he asked.

"I don't know…" she said, putting the box back in front of a small stack of cassettes in plastic cases. "I haven't found anything yet."

He looked up at the hand-lettered sign above the shelves – _CLASSICS_, it read – and wondered what she even was doing in this part of the store. Like hell he was going to watch something that wasn't even in color.

Her eyes continued to survey the shelf, entirely focused on her search, even as she leaned back against him. She reached over and grabbed another video, turning it over so she could read the back.

"Oh my god… We have to get this…" she said quietly, and then held up the box so he could see.

"Seriously, Tara…" he said, not even looking at it. "It's in black and white..."

She turned in his arms, and he loosened them slightly so his hands rested against the small of her back. "It's about a biker gang," she said. "And they invade this small town in California…"

Releasing her, he took the box and glanced down at it; on the front was a guy in a leather jacket leaning over the handles of a bike. "_The Wild One_? I've never heard of it." He turned it over to see the back cover. _1953? Who the fuck was alive in 1953?_

"We're definitely getting it," she said, grabbing one of the plastic cases.

He rolled his eyes a little and then tossed the box back in place on the shelf. If she was going to insist on renting something that prehistoric, then he was also going to make sure they got something else, something he could actually watch without dying of boredom.

_And I wonder when I sing along with you  
__If everything could ever feel this real forever  
__If anything could ever be this good again  
__The only thing I'll ever ask of you  
__You gotta promise not to stop when I say when, she sang…_

Tara was wandering aimlessly around the store, having left Jax in the Action section while he browsed for another movie. It was silly; she didn't think they even had time to watch a second one, not tonight at least.

They were originally going to hang at Jax's house – his mom and Clay were planning to go out with some friends, a brother named Otto and his wife Luann – but then his mom had apparently decided that she wanted to stay home, telling Jax that she was wiped out from her wrist and all the painkillers she was on. As cowardly as it was, Tara knew she didn't really want to be over there when his mom and stepdad were around. Even though Jax had assured her that his mom would be nice to her, she knew she it would be hard to just relax and hang out, knowing she could come in the living room and interrupt them at any point. The only other option would be to go to her house, but with her dad home, she would have to figure out some way to get Jax back into her room without going through the front door.

She had only been walking around for a minute or so, but she had already been able to make a full circle around the store, ending up near the back, by the shallow alcove leading to a door marked "Employees Only." _God, this place was tiny_, she thought. _Why couldn't they have a Blockbuster like every other normal town in America?_

"Found it," he said, approaching her, holding up a plastic case in his hand. She tilted her head and gave him a bemused half-grin. "No, it's good, I promise… Yeah, see, there's this guy who puts a bomb on a bus and makes it so it can't go under fifty miles an hour…"

She leaned back against the narrow wall of the alcove. Sometimes she had to remind herself that all this was really happening, that she wasn't dreaming it, that she wouldn't wake up and have it all go back to how it was before, before he came into her life so unexpectedly. It was hard to think about it now, her life before, hard to imagine how she had gone about her days, how she had even been able to make it through them at all. Because now she was here, in this video store, and he was standing across from her, with his dirty blond hair tucked behind his ears and the most impossible smile on his face, and he had called her his girlfriend and he always looked at her like she was _something_, and wasn't that just the craziest, most miraculous fucking thing she could have ever imagined?

"What?" he asked.

"Nothing," she replied quietly. She couldn't have explained it even if she had wanted to.

"Nothing, huh?" he rumbled as he moved closer towards her, placing his hands on either side of her head and leaning in so they were nearly touching.

She should have cared more that they were in public, that someone might walk by or the video clerk might see them, but it was hard to think about that when he was so close, his lips a whisper against hers, until he couldn't take much more of teasing her – _or was it the other way around?_ – and they found each other, colliding in heat and need. Her hand curved against his waist, across his back, her fingertips pushing past his cut and against the fabric of his shirt until she encountered bare skin; in that contact, she could feel him react, as he inhaled deeply, and pressed himself more firmly up against her. Something had gotten into her tonight – and clearly into him, too – something strange in the air that made her nearly blind to everything but the tingling, breathless pull that was growing deep within her. But she knew this was reckless, that they had to stop before they got caught. So she turned her face away from his and gently pushed him back, catching for one moment the look in his eyes that made her desperately want to grab him by the collar and pull him towards her again, so she could be lost in him forever. Instead, she seized his hand and tugged him towards the front of the store.

She turned and started walking backwards, still pulling him along. "C'mon," she said, her voice slightly shaky, not understanding why looking at him felt as natural as breathing, and nearly as necessary.

_Breathe out so I can breathe you in  
__Hold you in  
__And now I know you've always been  
__Out of your head  
__Out of my head, I sang…_

Jax leaned against the seat of his bike, waiting out the two minutes like she had asked him to. He didn't quite get it; her dad had to be a serious hardass if she was still worried about what would happen when he finally met Jax. Not that Jax himself was in all that big a hurry to get acquainted – he knew enough to recognize that he wasn't really meet-the-parents material – but it was weird how she seemed to go out of her way to make sure their paths never crossed. And he was kind of surprised that her dad didn't seem to want to get to know him, especially now that he and Tara had been spending so much time together over the past few weeks.

He pushed himself off the bike and started walking down towards her house. On the other side of the street an older woman was strolling down the sidewalk, a tiny terrier on a leash sniffing the grass next to her. She was staring at him, so he looked right back, giving her his best grin. "Evening," he said, and in response, she offered a slightly confused wave. It was kind of dumb, he knew, but a part of him always enjoyed confounding people's expectations about SAMCRO.

Once he got to the house, he took a diagonal in front of the garage, slipping around the corner and into the side yard, hoping no one would see him and somehow think he was breaking into the place. Tucking his hand over the wooden gate, he flipped the latch, and pushed the gate open, the hinges giving easily. He must have pushed harder than he had intended, as the gate swung wide, knocking against a dark green plastic trash can and making the lid pop off. As he leaned down to pick up the lid, his eyes flashed over the contents of the can.

Laying on top of a filled white trash bag was a gigantic pile of empty bottles that seemed to spill nearly to the bottom of the can. Beer bottles mostly, but he could also see a few Jack Daniels and some Smirnoff. It wasn't like he hadn't seen collections like that before, but it was at the club after a particularly rough weekend, the product of all the brothers, their friends, and assorted hangers-on who had been looking for – and found – a very good time. Even if the trash hadn't been picked in a while, this was still a crazy amount of alcohol. His mind started flashing through all the possibilities. He knew Tara didn't really drink; the only time he had even seen her have a beer was that night they met at the party. And unless she was secretly downing six-packs after he dropped her off at night, the only other option was her dad. _Fuck._ _She had to know, right? How could she not know?_ And then it hit him, a slam like oncoming traffic. _Of course she knew. And of course she didn't want Jax to meet him. _

He put the lid back on the can quickly. _As if that would somehow make the whole thing go away? _He didn't know what to do, whether he should try to talk to her about it, whether he should just pretend that he didn't see anything. But it all made so much sense now, the way she never really talked much about her dad or living with him, the fact that she didn't like hanging out at her house that much unless her dad was gone, the way she looked sometimes when he picked her up, upset like something deep inside was tearing at her.

He didn't really know how he could pretend like he hadn't seen it, though. But he couldn't just ask her straight out about something like that. Maybe eventually she would tell him. A small part of him was hurt that she hadn't trusted him enough to tell him, the way he had trusted her when he talked about his family. Why would she want to keep something like this from him? _And you're going to tell her everything that happens at the club, asshole?_ he thought harshly. But that wasn't the same, right? All that stuff the club did, it wasn't that important, not like this.

All he knew was that he wanted to be someone she could open up to, someone she would _want_ to talk to about shit like this. If he couldn't be a normal boyfriend, the kind who gave her rides to school in the morning and who she met outside her locker after her last class, at least he could do that for her.

He walked over towards her window just as she was pulling the curtains back. She flipped the lock and pushed the window open, and for a second stared down at it in consternation.

"Oh, crap, the screen," she murmured.

"It pops off," he replied, knowing this from experience. Rather than elaborating, he just curled his fingers around the edges of the wire screen and pulled gently until it came off. Setting it down against the wall, he braced his arms on the ledge and swung himself over, landing softly on the carpet inside her room.

As he was sitting on the window sill, he wiped his hands on his jeans, brushing off the faint residue of weather and dust. He looked over to see her pulling a wooden chair over to the door, and then she proceeded to brace the back of it under the doorknob.

Glancing up at him from under her lashes, she offered a shy smile. "I didn't have time to get a lock yet," she whispered.

_And I wonder when I sing along with you  
__If everything could ever feel this real forever  
__If anything could ever be this good again  
__The only thing I'll ever ask of you  
__You gotta promise not to stop when I say when_

She knew they had to be quiet. Her dad was still in the living room, watching the end of the baseball game, and she didn't want him thinking anything weird was going on. After she had come in, she had pretended to be really tired, telling him she was just going to watch a movie and then go to bed. He was half-drunk already, so he'd probably end up falling asleep on the couch before the game even ended. Still, she knew bringing Jax here was dangerous, and she felt an edge of tension nestling deep in the bottom of her stomach.

She knelt in front of the VCR and grabbed one of the plastic cassette cases she had dropped on the floor before she had let him in. She quickly caught a glance at the tapes littering the top of the VCR, most of which were her recorded copies of "My So-Called Life." For a while this spring, she had been watching them all the time, sometimes back-to-back, but now, well… Jordan Catalano was cute, but he didn't have anything on Jax Teller.

As she was switching on the TV and the VCR, she looked behind her to see him taking a seat on the floor, leaning back against the side of her bed. The fact that he had gone there, and not immediately to the bed itself, with all the associations and implications it held, eased her a little, and she felt the tension begin to loosen. She popped the tape in and grabbed the remote, taking a seat beside him and feeling her heart race like it always did when she was this close to him. He seemed a little more quiet and subdued than he had been at the video store, and she wasn't sure why.

The movie started strangely, with this long shot of an empty road, before a couple of dozen guys on motorcycles came blazing through. They were all wearing black leather jackets, with something written on the back. _BRMC_, it read, right above a skull and two crossed pistons.

"Oh my god, they're wearing cuts," she said, a smile forming on her lips as she tilted her head over towards him. He didn't seem that impressed. "Oh, come on, don't pretend like you don't think that's cool." He looked at her, still not saying anything, but his eyes holding a trace of amusement. "I bet you even know what kind of bike he's driving," she said.

"Triumph 6T Thunderbird," he replied. "Probably a 1950." She could see the edges of his mouth turning upwards.

"Show off," she teased, curling herself into him so that her head rested against the hollow of his shoulder. He draped his arm around her, his hand catching around her waist.

As the movie continued, she watched as the guys in the motorcycle club drove into some small town and terrified the locals, all except for this girl Kathie who worked in the café, and she was clearly into the leader of the group, a guy named Johnny. He was into her too, but for a while, nothing was really happening between them. Finally, he took her for a ride on his bike at night, this slow-paced jazz song playing as they drove down a moonlit road, and Tara watched as she was holding onto Johnny's leather jacket, the wind in her hair and this look on her face, a mixture of fear and wonder and excitement. Tara felt a pang of immediate recognition, and for a moment, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath, remembering the feeling of night air cool against her cheek, the second skin of Jax's leather cut under her palms. She opened her eyes and tried to pull her attention back to what was happening on the screen. Johnny had now driven the bike onto a grassy area and he and Kathie were talking.

"_I've never ridden on a motorcycle before," _Kathie said to Johnny._ "It's fast… It scared me… But I forgot everything… Felt good…"_

She looked over and saw that Jax seemed pretty focused on the movie, which was surprising; she had thought that by this point, his attention would have seriously lapsed. Tara, on the other hand, was rapidly losing her ability to concentrate, her awareness of his body next to hers growing acutely, feeling the warmth of his skin through his shirt, the pressure of his grip against her waist.

"_I wish I was going someplace… I wish you were going someplace… We could go together…"_

Without saying anything, Tara lifted her leg and swiveled it over him, straddling his lap. The movie forgotten, she placed her hands on his shoulders and softly found his lips, moving against him with deliberation and quiet urging. His hands were soon on her hips, gripping into her skin, and all she wanted was his cut and shirt off, so she could feel even more of him. She crossed her arms in front of her so she could pull off her shirt as well, and they pressed against each other, and she had to figure out some way, _any_ way, for the two of them to somehow get closer.

Pulling away from him a little, she reached behind her back to unhook the clasp of her bra.

"Tara…" he said, whether in encouragement or disapproval, she couldn't tell.

"Shhhh…" she whispered, as she caught his mouth again, their breath intermingling. The thin straps tumbled down her shoulders and she pulled the rest of the fabric away from her body before wrapping her arms around his neck and clasping him even more tightly against her.

**UPDATE: This story is temporarily on hiatus. I will get back to it, I promise, probably at some point in the early fall. What can I say? The inspiration muse takes us where it wants - and right now it's parking me in the cavernous garage that is _Mad Max: Fury Road_. (I've done a couple stories in that fandom, if you're interested... and you should be... that movie's got guns and motorcycles galore!) Once I've wrapped up with that, I will be coming back to Jax and Tara... In the meantime, though, I still love feedback (reviews, favoriting, following, etc.)!**

**UPDATE: Now back to our regularly scheduled programming... Chapter 12 is up!**


	12. Fade Into You

_**A/N: So in the world of SOA, the Hells Angels don't really seem to exist, I guess because the Sons are supposed to **__**be**__** the Hells Angels, but I wanted to stray just slightly from the canon in order to put them back in. Thanks to everyone for sticking with this story through the summer hiatus! **_

July 1995

_I want to hold the hand inside you  
__I want to take a breath that's true  
__I look to you and I see nothing  
__I look to you to see the truth  
__You live your life  
__You go in shadows  
__You'll come apart and you'll go blind  
__Some kind of night into your darkness  
__Colors your eyes with what's not there…_

She felt totally sick to her stomach. Most likely it was due to the fact that she hadn't really eaten anything since last night, but feeling the way she did, with her insides solid and heavy as if they were lined with lead, she had zero interest in food at all.

Tara sat sprawled across her bed, surrounded by the mid-day sun and half a dozen books, as she continued to page through them, every word she read like a smack against a tender bruise. Her head was spinning in a million directions, and she felt dizzy and disoriented like she was drunk, but without the buzzed euphoria that went with it. Leaning her head back against the headboard, she closed her eyes and tried to breathe, tried to put everything back into shape. He was coming to pick her up in a couple of hours, and then they would have to head over to the clubhouse, where the barbecue would be in full swing.

It had all started yesterday morning, when she had finally gotten a chance to skim through the book she had bought the week before about the Hells Angels. She wasn't sure what she had been expecting – some crazy stories about the '60s and life on the open road, maybe – but everything she read had been so disturbing, so awful, that she couldn't really wrap her head around it.

The movie she and Jax had watched – at least up until the part when she had gotten so distracted – had made the guys in the motorcycle clubs seem kind of scary, but fun, too. Rebels, sure, but up against all that conformity and judgment, they seemed pretty justified at telling the world to kiss their asses. What the book was talking about, though – and it was talking about real people, not just characters in a movie – wasn't really social rebellion, but just straight-up criminal behavior.

There were guns and knives and drugs, fights and assaults and stabbings, and even rapes – the book had talked about the gang rapes of two girls, fourteen and fifteen, in Monterey, not even a hundred and fifty miles away. And all the members of these clubs, they called themselves "One Percenters," real outlaws that were beyond all the rules of society. She probably would have tried to shrug it off, tell herself that the book she was reading was almost thirty years old, that it was all in the past, but then she had remembered the wall of arrest photos at the clubhouse and all her insides went cold. _An inside joke_, he had said. Over the past few weeks, she had forgotten about the wall, Jax's explanation made easier to believe by the fact that he and Opie were harmless, their black leather and tough exterior notwithstanding. All those things she had thought before she had known him, she had come to see that it was all just gossip and bullshit; she knew he didn't carry a gun, and she suspected he hadn't actually been in half the fights he was rumored to have been part of.

So yesterday afternoon, before her SAT class, she had gone over to the public library, to see what else she could find. There had to be something more recent, something she hoped would detail how the motorcycle clubs had eventually abandoned their large-scale criminal activities and turned into – mostly – law-abiding citizens.

The library, however, didn't offer much to make her feel better. Cross-referenced in the card catalog under "Hells Angels" were subject terms like "Motorcycle gangs – California" and "Outlaws – California" and, even more worrisome, "Organized Crime." She had quickly made her way through the stacks, pulling book after book, rushing because she didn't want to be late to her class, a sinking feeling following her until she finally got home and had a chance to look at everything.

In the growing darkness of her bedroom, she had read about Altamont and Sonny Barger. She had read about gun-running and methamphetamines and the war with the Mongols over territory in Southern California. She had read about investigations by the FBI, DEA, ATF, local police forces, and a variety of abbreviated law enforcement agencies she couldn't even entirely identify. There were pictures from the 1960s of tattooed Hells Angels and their old ladies, even arrest photos, everyone looking dirty and disreputable, their hair greasy and clothes unwashed.

At some point in the night, she had fallen asleep among the open books, and woken to a blade of late morning sunlight falling across her lap. Shaking the sleep from her mind, she had continued her investigation, becoming more and more disturbed as she read, but somehow unable to stop herself. In the last book, she finally found what she had been dreading most of all, in a chapter titled "Sons of Anarchy: California." There was the story of the club's founding and its expansion past the original chapter in Charming, into the rest of California, into Oregon, Nevada, Arizona. In the glossy center pages of the book there was even a picture of a bunch of long-haired guys in denim labelled "FIRST 9" and she gasped to realize that she recognized the pale blue bike one of them was sitting on. Jax's dad was mentioned, along with Opie's, and even though the book was a few years old, it referenced an on-going feud with a rival club from Oakland called the Mayans, all of it wrapped up in violent assaults and illegal gun sales and even the possibility of murder.

_Some inside joke_.

She knew that, at some point, she would have to open her eyes and get up off her bed. She would have to take a shower and put on some clothes. And then she would have to smile and get on the back of his motorcycle and let him take her to a party being held at the headquarters of what was most likely a criminal organization, where she would be surrounded by dangerous felons, men who seemed to be capable of just about anything.

_Fade into you  
__Strange you never knew  
__Fade into you  
__I think it's strange you never knew…_

She was gripping onto his waist so loosely that Jax was sure she was going to tumble off if he took a turn too sharp. It was weird, just because he knew that she normally liked to hold on tight and lay her cheek on his shoulder when she sat behind him. He liked it, too – with the feel of her arms clasped against his ribs, her hair whispering across his neck, her breath warm on his skin – even though it tended to distract him from the road.

But today she had positioned herself further away from him on the seat, as if she didn't want to get too close. Even when he had picked her up, she had been pretty quiet, just giving him a quick smile that didn't seem to quite reach her eyes and stepping onto the bike without really even looking at him. He couldn't figure out any clear reason for her to act like that; everything had been fine when he dropped her off the day before yesterday, although he hadn't talked to her since then. Maybe something had happened with her dad, something she wasn't in a mood to talk about, something that was still bothering her, even now, after she had left the house. He wondered if maybe she had been caught somehow, that maybe her dad had found out Jax had been in her room that night last week and that he and Tara had been messing around. How anyone would have been able to figure that out, he didn't really know, but it might explain how she was acting.

It probably was a good thing, then, that they hadn't ended up having sex in her room. They hadn't gotten _that_ close: he had been pretty surprised that she had ended up taking off her bra and even more so when she let him unzip the front of her jean shorts, but he had spent a while happily exploring these undiscovered parts of her before they finally looked up to see that the movie had ended and the tape was spitting itself out of the VCR.

At that point, he had realized that he should probably take off, and as he had slipped his shirt and cut back on, he had looked at her for a moment, her dark hair loose and tangled up in itself, her skin warm and flushed pink with excitement. He wanted her so bad – that part wasn't anything new – but what he couldn't fully begin to understand was the sense of warm fullness expanding into his chest, almost painful for all that it was so new and unfamiliar. He didn't have the vocabulary for this kind of feeling, knowing only that looking at her was somehow like being ripped apart and put back together all at the same time. Before he left, he had kissed her slowly, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her against him in a way that he knew was only bound to get the lower half of his body over-excited once again. But that hadn't mattered; all that had mattered was the feel of her, soft under his hands, the heady rush that he had somehow felt everywhere, all at once. _Did she feel like this about him?_ he had wondered. _What would he do if she didn't? _

At this point, though, they were almost to the club and he was still trying to figure out what he could do or say to brighten her mood. At the next red light, he shifted in the seat and turned back towards her.

"This'll be a lot of fun, I promise," he yelled over the growl of the bike.

But she wasn't even looking at him. She just nodded and gave him a tight-lipped smile, glancing over at him briefly before she gazed back into the distance. She seemed miles away, wrapped up in whatever was happening in her head. In his peripheral vision, he could see the light switch to green, and, once he sensed that she wasn't going to say anything back, he swiveled back to face the road and eased off the brake.

Even before he made the turn into the parking lot, he caught the aroma of charcoal burning in the grill, a smell that always reminded him of summer, with all its long days stretching into warm nights. It was hard for him to be too preoccupied when the evening seemed to hold such promise, eating and drinking and having a good time, surrounded by his friends, his family, his brothers, and, of course, his girl. At some point, he knew, she would push past whatever was bothering her, and then she could let loose a little and enjoy herself.

Jax drove down towards the left of the loading ramp and parked the bike at the end of a long line of Harleys, but before they could join the party, he took the helmet from her hand and pulled her in close. Looking around at all the old ladies and girlfriends milling around in front of the clubhouse, he realized that maybe she was just nervous with the idea of being around his mom, which made sense, considering the fact that she hadn't thought their first meeting had gone all that well.

"Hey," he said, his hands lightly clasping her hips as he tried to catch her gaze.

She finally looked back at him, an emotion he couldn't quite recognize flashing through her dark eyes. He knew her well enough by now to know that when she bit against her bottom lip – like she was starting to do – it meant that she was nervous.

Jax leaned in, his lips brushing against the downy softness of her cheek. Even over the thumping music blasting from the clubhouse porch and the din of voices, he could hear her hushed breath against his ear.

"It's okay," he whispered, and then he kissed her, a soft graze against her lips.

Finding her hand, he threaded his fingers in hers, and they began to make their way towards the clubhouse building, where some of the brothers and their friends were lounging around on plastic fold-out chairs, nursing bottles of beer. He caught sight of Chibs and Bobby near the front, both focused on the getting the flame on the grill to an acceptable height, although Bobby seemed to be insisting on throwing on more lighter fluid, even in the face of Chibs's very vocal opposition.

Jax kept his eyes peeled for his mom, even though he couldn't spot her anywhere. A few of the other old ladies were standing around a tablecloth-covered picnic table, pulling plastic wrap off bowls of potato salad, but she wasn't with them.

He turned towards Tara, and with his free hand pushed a stray piece of hair behind her ear. "So do you want to eat?" he asked. "Or we could just hang out for a while –"

"Oh, good, you're here…"

Jax turned his head to see Opie loping towards them, looking more than a little relieved.

Opie shifted his gaze over for a quick moment. "Hey, Tara," he said.

"Hey, Opie," she replied, and Jax was pleased to see a little smile curving along her mouth.

"Clay was looking for you," Opie said, turning back to Jax.

"Why?" he asked. All sorts of shitty scenarios involving Clay and urgent club business flipped through his brain, none of which he wanted to involve Tara in at all.

"Something about the meat, for the grill."

"I thought they picked everything up from the German," said Jax, now slightly confused, but relieved that the issue had nothing to do with the club.

"Yeah, I dunno," said Opie, shrugging his shoulders. "He was asking for you, though. Needed your help." He swiveled his head towards the lot entrance near the garage. "It's all back in his car, near the street."

Jax glanced over at Tara. She was still looking a little wide-eyed and nervous, and he was hesitant to leave her by herself where anything could happen. It was still pretty early in the evening for her to be the object of much unwanted attention, but once the guys started really drinking that could easily change, and without Jax around, they wouldn't exactly know that she was hands-off. Plus, his mom was roaming around somewhere, and he knew she would probably pounce on Tara if she found her alone. But he couldn't ignore a summons from Clay, no matter what it was about, not when he still felt like he was on thin ice with his step-father.

"I'll be back in a little bit," he said to her. "But Opie'll stay here with you, okay?"

She nodded, giving him a tiny smile as she pulled her hand from his.

Before he walked away, Jax leaned towards Opie. "Just watch out for my mom," he said quietly to his friend. "Don't let her pull any weird shit with Tara." _Fuck if he was going to let her ruin tonight for Tara – or for him, for that matter._

_A stranger's light comes on slowly  
__A stranger's heart without a home  
__You put your hands into your head  
__And then smiles cover your heart…_

Any other time and Tara would have been more bothered by the awkwardness of Opie standing across from her, neither of them saying anything, as his eyes glanced around at everything but her.

But this was different. She couldn't keep her attention on Opie, not when there were so many other worrisome things competing for it. Guitar-heavy 70s rock music was blaring out of a stereo set up by the clubhouse entrance, and she cast a wide gaze over all the leather-clad men lounging nearby, many sporting black bandanas and sunglasses that reflected back the glow of the setting sun. A handful were wearing cuts, and seeing so many men in the same piece of clothing made the whole scene look vaguely official and, considering what she now knew, even more disturbing. After a few seconds of squinting in an attempt to get a better look at their faces, she realized there were a few she actually remembered from the arrest photos arrayed on the wall of the clubhouse. Instinctually, she looked away, not wanting to be caught staring, her gaze catching on the plastic buckets full of ice and longnecks, along with the two kegs set up nearby. She didn't see any other kinds of alcohol, but knowing what was stacked layers-deep behind the bar inside the clubhouse, she had no doubt they would be hitting the harder stuff later.

There were women, too, milling around with the guys, dressed mostly in tight tops and high skirts. Denim, leather, and Lycra seemed to be the fabrics of choice and she spotted more than a few tattoos hovering above low-cut necklines or just peeking over the tops of waistbands. She wondered how many of these women knew what really happened here, how many of them came here to get caught up in the thrill of being chased by dangerous men, without really knowing what kind of threat they were drawing in with their smiles and easy laughter.

On some level, it was hard for her to believe that Jax knew about everything that went on. He just wasn't like that, at least not with her. Sure, she had seen his temper, and she had little doubt that if he was provoked, he would know what to do to take care of himself, but she couldn't see him as a killer, or even being part of a group that could be involved in vicious assaults and murder. How could he be, when she had seen him be so sweet and affectionate, when she seemed to feel so safe when she was with him? She could only hope that they had kept the worst of it from him, that he really did spend his time working in the garage and doing small errands for the club. _Which, of course, was still undoubtedly a criminal enterprise_, she thought darkly. _Was it just a matter of time before his photo was up on that wall?_

"So you want something to drink or something?" Opie asked. "Food probably won't be ready for a while."

"Uh, sure," she said, glancing around, but only seeing the kegs and buckets full of beer. "Is there water or soda, maybe?"

He looked over at the object of her gaze and grinned a little to himself. "There are kids here, Tara, so, yeah, there's definitely water and soda. No beer for the kiddies." He tilted his head towards the side of the clubhouse. "C'mon…"

Around the corner, she found a couple of coolers with cold cans of Coke and Sprite and she fished one out and popped it open. Opie took one, too, and for a few moments, they stood in silence, without having much too really say to one another. And even though she was glad to have someone with her while she was here, she felt bad that Opie had gotten roped into staying with her, when he clearly would have rather been doing something else.

"You don't have to babysit me, you know," she said finally.

"No, it's cool. And Jax'll be back soon." He was quiet again for a moment or two, but then she could see his face tense up as if he wanted to ask her something. "Well, actually, can you hang here for a minute? I really gotta run and take a piss."

"Yeah, sure," she said, laughing a little. "I'll just… stay here."

"Great," he said, giving her a quick grin before he turned back towards the parking lot, setting off into a jog in the direction of the garage.

As she watched him go, she leaned back against the clubhouse wall, feeling the reverberation of the music echoing through it. She could still hear voices around the corner and more people were walking past her to join the party, one or two guys in cuts, but also some middle-aged women in less revealing outfits and even young children, running back and forth on the blacktop of the parking lot. She took a deep breath and tried to imagine that this was a normal Fourth of July barbeque, the kind she had been planning to go to – the kind she had been _excited_ about going to– before she read all that stuff about the motorcycle clubs. Everything would be so much better if she could just stop thinking about it. Couldn't she just try to forget about it, pretend it wasn't really happening, just for one night?

As she let out her breath, Tara suddenly caught a glimpse of Jax's mom, who gave her a little wave and then started coming towards her, gliding like a queen in high platform sandals. She was wearing tight jeans and a black lace tank top, and in the time since Tara had seen her last, she seemed to have decorated the strap of her protective arm sling with tiny rhinestones.

Tara didn't know what to expect, but if this was going to be anything like the first time she had encountered Jax's mom, she definitely needed to prepare herself for what was about to come her way.

"Tara, hi…" said the older woman as she approached. She was smiling, but it was hard to tell whether it was genuine or not. "We're so glad you could come."

"Uh, thanks, Mrs. Teller-Morrow," Tara replied. "Thanks for inviting me."

"No, no, call me Gemma," she said, her voice like a soft purr. "'Mrs. Teller-Morrow' is such a mouthful."

"Uh, okay…_Gemma_…" Tara didn't get it; why was she being so nice all of the sudden? It was as if she was talking to a totally different person.

"Summer's treating you okay?" she asked.

"Um, yeah, it's fine. I've got a job and I started an SAT class last week." At this point, Tara realized that her mouth was moving faster than her brain; there wasn't any real reason she should be talking about her class, but she knew that on some level she must have just really wanted to make a good impression.

"SAT, huh?" Gemma said with a little laugh. "Maybe some of that'll rub off on Jax…"

"Well, I want to go to college. And med school." _Shit, shit, she needed to stop now, _Tara thought, _before she started to sound like the world's biggest kiss-ass. _

"A doctor, wow. Impressive." Gemma paused a moment, a slightly more serious expression shadowing the artfully sculpted curves of her eyebrows. "And you seem to be dealing with everything else pretty well."

_Everything else? _Tara had no idea what she was talking about. "I'm sorry?"

"Well, with Jax…" she elaborated, her silky voice taking on a tiny note of sympathy.

"What would I have to deal with with Jax?"

"It's hard, you know, not always knowing what might happen to them each day. It'll only get worse when he's fully patched in."

"'What might happen'…?" Tara repeated dumbly. She still had no real idea what Jax's mom was getting at, but she sensed it was something important, something that seemed to connect back to Tara's earlier fears about Jax and what he knew about the club's activities.

Gemma sighed, her gaze shifting away from Tara for a moment. "There's always some amount of danger associated with the club. Jax is lucky that his arm wasn't more than a graze."

At first, Tara didn't know what she was talking about. Jax's arm? What had happened to his arm? And then she remembered, all of it – the bandage and the blood, the story about the accident at the garage.

"Oh, honey," said Gemma, "he told you he got shot, right?"

The words hung in the air, taking shape and then burrowing a hole in Tara's brain so deep, it was as if those were the only words she was capable of understanding. She stood in shock for a moment, not caring how it looked, only knowing that her heart was breaking, only knowing that she was standing there as she watched everything she had thought and believed vanish into thin air.

"Uh, I have to… um, excuse me." She brushed past Gemma, not even waiting for a response. She had no idea where she was going, and, honestly, she didn't care.

_Fade into you  
__Strange you never knew  
__Fade into you  
__I think it's strange you never knew…_

Jax turned the corner around the garage, scanning the crowd for a petite brunette and the familiar sight of Opie's black toque.

He couldn't believe the business with Clay had taken as long as it did, especially when it was all due to what turned out to be a simple misunderstanding. Clay had somehow gotten himself convinced that he had picked up the wrong order from the German and with Gemma nowhere to be found – _worrisome in itself_, Jax thought – he had thought that Jax might remember exactly what his mother had ordered. Of course, Jax had no idea, so Clay had made him call the butcher shop from the garage office and confirm that they had given him all the right numbers of beef patties, sausages, and short ribs. Jax quietly grumbled, knowing Clay was perfectly capable of picking up the phone himself, but he wasn't about to argue, not when he just wanted to get the whole mess figured out and get back to Tara as soon as possible.

But now he couldn't find her – or Opie, for that matter – and he had no clue where they might have gone. While he was with Clay, he had started thinking about what he might do when he got back to her, and he realized that all he wanted was to secretly grab a few beers and then take her to find some quiet, deserted spot on the roof. They could hang out up there half the night, watch the party going on down below, and then lie back and see all the fireworks as they lit up the sky above. It would be perfect, like it was all made just for them.

The party had gotten more packed and as he made his way through the groups clustered on the clubhouse porch, he caught sight of Opie and one of the other prospects lounging in plastic patio chairs back near the fighting ring. And for some reason, she didn't seem to be anywhere nearby.

Opie was taking a long drag from a half-finished cigarette, but he exhaled quickly when he saw Jax approach.

"Jax, what's up, man?"

"Where's Tara?" he asked sharply, not even bothering to hide his concern.

"I thought she was with you," Opie replied. "I came back from the can and she was gone."

"You left her alone?" Jax could hear the volume of his voice rising with frustration. "I asked you to stay with her…"

Opie leaned forward in his chair, raising up his hands in an exasperated gesture. "I was gone a minute or two, tops. Seriously, man. Where'd she go?"

"You really don't know?"

"No, like I said, I thought she was with you."

"Shit," said Jax, rubbing his palms roughly against his face. "And you haven't seen my mom?"

"Yeah, she's right over there," Opie replied, pointing towards the other side of the lot. Jax turned to see his mom standing next to one of the picnic tables, talking to Big Otto's old lady, Luann, while they both arranged plates and napkins and little piles of plastic silverware. "She's been there since I came back outside," he added.

"Okay, well, uh…" Jax looked around one more time, and then sighed. "If you see Tara, don't let her go anywhere. Tell her to wait 'til I come back."

"Yeah, no problem," said Opie, offering a casual shrug.

Jax turned back towards the party, which was now clearly shifting into full gear, even as he told himself to calm down a little. More than likely, there was no need to get concerned. She probably had just needed to go to the bathroom herself, or had wandered in the clubhouse looking for somewhere more quiet to wait for him.

For a second, he fantasized that maybe she had gotten hold of a key to one of the dorm rooms and she was waiting for him there. Maybe tonight she would want to take off more than just her bra. _Damn_, he thought, _that might explain why she was acting so quiet on the way over here_. He could feel a wave of excitement rushing over his body at the idea of it, inciting him to move a little more quickly as he searched for her in the mass of people that occupied the space around the clubhouse building.

The sky was bleeding into shades of pink and purple as he made a hasty inspection of the rest of the outdoor spaces, finding her nowhere. The bay doors of the garage were down and the office was locked, so there was no way she was in there. Unless she had left the party altogether, the only possibility was the clubhouse itself.

As he made his way inside, he noticed that the lights were on in the main room, but it was totally deserted, dampened echoes of the bass-heavy music outside filtering in through the windows.

"Tara!" he yelled out. "Are you back here?"

He didn't hear a response, but he continued making his way across the room, quickly glancing over at the darkened interior of the chapel, light barely glinting along the edges of the carved wooden table that stood inside. He still couldn't figure out where the hell she might have gone and why she took off the way she did. He could only hope that it would all make sense later, that they could go back outside to the party and make up for lost time.

Passing by his dad's Harley, he turned around the corner of the wood-paneled hallway and caught a quick glimpse of a figure on the floor, nestled against the alcove of a doorframe. All he recognized at first was an impenetrable curtain of long brown hair, but as he got closer, she raised her head and looked at him, knees tucked up under her chin, her eyes red and tinged with hurt. And even though it made no fucking sense at all, she was staring at him like he was the last person on earth she wanted to see.

_Fade into you  
__Strange you never knew  
__Fade into you  
__I think it's strange you never knew  
__I think it's strange you never knew_

It was the sound of her own name that drew Tara out of her thoughts, sharp as it ricocheted through the hallway, and with it the realization that she wouldn't be able to hide for much longer.

She was used to hiding. She had done it for years, mostly in response to her father's volatile moods, always managing to find herself some little safe space, where she could make herself small and unobtrusive, invisible to the world.

She must have known he would eventually come looking for her; why else would she have stuck around, rather than just taking off and making her way back home? Deep down, she understood that some part of her just wanted to know if it was true, if he had lied to her, played her like she was some stupid little girl who didn't deserve the truth.

She could only hold out a tiny sliver of hope that it wasn't true. Maybe his mom had lied – although why she would about something like that, Tara had no clue – or maybe she had just misunderstood. But everything was staring her right in the face – all the disturbing stories from her book, the hardened and tattooed men in leather cuts outside, the portrait gallery of felons on the wall, even the memory of Jax's evasiveness when she had pressed him for details about his arm – and it couldn't be ignored. She had wanted to think that he was different, but it was more and more obvious that he was just like the rest of them.

_If she asked him, what would he say? Would he even bother to tell her the truth?_

She could feel her eyes seizing up with emotion, tears threatening to spill onto her cheeks, and she quickly rubbed them away with the back of her hand. It hurt so bad, like she couldn't breathe, as if her heart couldn't actually remember how to keep beating.

From behind her hair, she watched as he emerged from the hallway entrance, stopping a few feet away from her. Despite everything, she wanted to see his face, and she turned her head upwards, meeting his gaze with her own.

"Babe, are you okay?" he asked quickly, his eyes full of concern as he stepped towards her. "What happened?"

She said nothing, but instead flattened her palms against the ground and slowly pushed herself up onto her feet, never once taking her eyes off of him. Everything was frozen inside of her, everything except her heart, thrashing within the cold steel cage of her ribs. There was really only one thing she could say to him.

"What happened to your arm, Jax?" she finally asked, her voice soft but unwavering.

At first, he only looked confused, as if he couldn't figure out what she was talking about. But just as quickly, there was a resigned shift in his expression, small but perceptible, and his shoulders dropped a fraction of an inch, as if pulled by an invisible weight.

He took a shallow breath, but didn't say anything. He didn't have to.

It would have been horrible to stand there and listen to him offer a parade of excuses, or try to skirt around the truth with more lies and evasions. So how could she have known that it would be even worse to have him to say nothing at all, an unspoken confession written in the depths of his sky-blue eyes?

The moment stretched on, a widening chasm between them, somehow containing everything and nothing. She couldn't stand it any longer, looking at him like this, and she took a step into the hallway, brushing past him as quickly as she could. He made a half-hearted attempt to grasp her shoulder, but she shook it off, not looking behind her as she turned around the corner, moving even faster as she made her way into the main room of the clubhouse. All she could think of now was getting out of this place and away from him, finding somewhere she could feel safe.

_How could she have been so wrong? _she thought, as tears began to grace the corners of her eyes. She had thought that she knew him. But it was all just a lie – she hadn't known him at all.


End file.
